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Mission Priority Examen offers Santa Clara an opportunity to engage with its values

For all the meaningful work his team does, Vice President for Mission and Ministry Matthew Carnes, S.J., knows Santa Clara’s mission isn’t confined to his division’s office in Nobili Hall.

In fact, he sees it play out in dozens of ways across campus, every day. 

“It’s all of us—the way we tend the gardens, the ways our community comes together, the way we counsel our students,” Carnes explains. “Every level of what we do is a mission opportunity.”

It’s for this reason that taking stock of the University’s mission is such an important exercise. In February, Santa Clara began the Mission Priority Examen, a process Carnes calls a “temperature check” for the University’s mission. 

Organized in coordination with the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, as well as the Jesuits West Province of the Society of Jesus, the Mission Priority Examen (MPE) is a year-long self-examination that culminates in a report that identifies mission priorities to work in concert with the University’s Impact 2030 strategic plan. 

The Mission Priority Examen is conducted at all Jesuit universities in the United States once every seven years, but Carnes believes the timing of this year’s review is particularly valuable for the Santa Clara community. 

With so much uncertainty in the world, from advances in technology to political strife, examining the values that guide us can be a stabilizing exercise for individuals and can help our community integrate what’s most important to us into the work we do every day. 

“Our Jesuit mission gives us a distinct view on the world that can be a strength and one we can lean on,” Carnes explains. “These are things that people really value and can speak to the current moment.” 

The MPE steering committee, which is co-chaired by Carnes, Provost and Executive Vice President James Glaser, and professor of sociology Laura Nichols, started its work in the spring quarter, hosting 27 hour-long focus groups with nearly 500 members of the campus community. Discussions were guided by two orienting questions:

• How is the Jesuit Catholic Mission of Santa Clara most visible and most apparent?
• How does it seem most absent and unseen? 

In addition to the focus groups, campus community members received an online survey, which, alongside a recent Campus Climate Survey and annual exit survey given to graduating students, will also inform the final report.

This summer, the steering committee began forming preliminary findings and priorities, which will be shared this fall during several community conversations. These sessions will help the committee know if they’re headed in the right direction and that nothing is missing, Carnes says. He encourages everyone in the community to attend the conversations or fill out the survey if they haven’t already. 

“We’ve already spoken to a few hundred people, but we want everyone to be a part of this,” Carnes says. “This is a richer process when everyone participates.” 

After the feedback sessions, the steering committee will compile a final report which will be presented to an AJCU visiting team in January before it’s ultimately approved by the superior general of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Arturo Sosa, S.J., in Rome, likely in summer 2026. 

While Carnes says it’s too soon to share specifics about potential priorities, he’s already excited to see how people implement the priorities into their work. Each department or division on campus, Carnes says, will engage with these priorities differently, which is what makes it most meaningful. 

Carnes points to an exercise called “Moments for Mission” that he runs during each meeting of the president’s cabinet and at each meeting of the board of trustees. At the beginning of the meeting, Carnes will share a different element of the mission in action, and rather than expect people to hear the lesson and act on it, he invites them to reflect and share. Each person, Carnes says, takes away—and contributes—something a little different. 

“One of the reasons we do the Mission Priority Examen is so people can enhance their understanding of our mission and make it their own,” Carnes says. “As any community, we keep evolving, and how we appropriate these and make them our own, and how we express them and sometimes even modify and see them grow. So that to me is really exciting.”