The Africa Experience

Loyola University Chicago has been sponsoring local, national, and international immersion trips for its students for the past 12 years. Witnessing the transformative effect that similar trips have had on the lives of our students, the Jesuit Community and the Office of Academic Affairs plan to make this kind of experience available to other members of the university community, to Loyola's faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees.

This two-week immersion trip to East Africa provides Loyola's faculty, staff, administrators and trustees with an opportunity to deepen and expand their commitment to justice through direct contact with the poor. It enhances our understanding of social suffering, and promotes the infusion of social justice issues into the culture and classrooms of the University. It further develops skills to create methods for the promotion of social justice on Loyola's campuses.

The program has three goals:

1. To contribute to the spiritual and intellectual development of Loyola's educational community (faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees)
2. To infuse a deeper recognition of social justice into the individual as well as into the culture and structures of the University, particularly into the teaching, research and service practices of the institution
3. To connect Loyola University to the issues of global justice in a creative way and develop mechanisms for a continuing and mutually beneficial relationship between Africa and Loyola.

Registration for this year's immersion trip is handled by the Center for Ethics and Social Justice. Get more info about the trip.