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What's the Tea with Ministry?
Welcome to What’s the Tea with Ministry!
Where we spill the tea on the Jesuit and Mercy mission at the University of Detroit Mercy! Bringing you mission-centered conversation through storytelling, reflection, and community connection all over a cup of tea.
What's the Tea with Ministry?
Core Values Unveiled: A Conversation with Fr. Charles Oduke
What makes Detroit Mercy unique among thousands of universities worldwide? Father Charles Oduke, Vice President for Mission Integration, reveals the answer through our newly articulated core values that braid together our Jesuit and Mercy traditions.
"These values aren't new—they're newly articulated," Father Charles explains, highlighting how they've always been part of our identity since the 1990 consolidation of the two sponsoring traditions. What makes them special is their emphasis on action verbs: educating the whole person, cultivating a diverse community, embodying mercy and compassion, fostering faith and justice, and serving and leading in Detroit.
The process of creating these values involved representatives from all eight colleges working to find language that would be welcoming and inclusive while remaining faithful to both founding traditions. Father Charles shares how they deliberately moved away from insider jargon to create accessible phrases that anyone—regardless of background, role, or religious tradition—could connect with. "We have a big tent," he notes, "and that language of inclusion is what made it possible."
Through rich examples and personal insights, Father Charles reveals how these values integrate the priorities of both the Sisters of Mercy and the Jesuits while creating something uniquely Detroit Mercy. He explains how they're already being implemented across campus and how they help answer the "why" behind our university's work. As we approach our 150th anniversary, these values provide a framework for sustaining hope and continuing our transformative mission.
Whether you're a student, faculty member, staff, or alum, this conversation offers a deeper understanding of what it means to be part of the Detroit Mercy community and how these core values can help us develop that sense of Titan pride that makes us who we are.
Welcome to what's the Tea with Ministry, where we spill the tea on the Jesuit and Mercy mission at the University of Detroit Mercy, bringing you mission-centered conversation through storytelling, reflection and community connection, all over a cup of tea Hosted by Anna Bryson in University Ministry. That's me. I'm so excited to be joined today by Father Charles Oduke. Father Charles is the Vice President for mission integration here at Detroit Mercy. As a child in Kenya, father Oduke's earliest education was by the Sisters of Mercy. His career in Jesuit higher education dates from 1994, when he served as a missionary in war-torn Sudan. Father Oduke earned his doctoral degree in philosophy at Boston College. He was also on the faculty there and taught social justice philosophy and the African diaspora studies. We're so excited to have you here today, father Charles. Thank you for being on our podcast.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, Anna. I am delighted to be able to have this conversation with you and to our listeners not only in Detroit but across the globe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're so excited to have you. You're two years into your time here at Detroit, mercy, and we're just so excited to have you as a guest on the podcast. We always start our podcast by having something called the tea segment or our conversation time. We started this tradition on the podcast. It's why our podcast is called what's the Tea with Ministry. We wanted to make sure that our podcast always felt conversational and was in the spirit of our Mercy and Jesuit traditions. This particular tradition comes from our Sisters of Mercy. Catherine Macaulay said on her deathbed make sure the sisters sit down and have a comfortable cup of tea, and it was never about the tea, but more about the community shared amongst the sisters that they maintained conversation and open communication after her death. And so that's what we do here on our podcast is we sit down and we have a cup of tea together. So I gave you a cup of tea prior to us starting to record and I am just going to ask you what flavor of tea did you choose to have before we started recording?
Speaker 2:Actually, Anna, thank you very much for offering me a cup of tea because tea. Actually, Anna, thank you very much for offering me a cup of tea because tea. I suspect this tea was grown maybe in Kenya or Ceylon, which is modern day Sri Lanka, and it found its way maybe to Ireland, Dublin, to the Mercy Sites and to Mother Macaulay's place in Burgot Street. I learned that the purpose of tea is to create safe space.
Speaker 2:And so thank you very much for creating this space, and it's a safe space for us to share not just a cup of tea, but our feelings and our work and our hopes. You're welcome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I decided to have a classic mint tea. I think that's what I pretty much have every time I make tea for the podcast. I'm consistent. One day I promise I'll branch out, but I'm having a cup of mint tea and Father Charles, I think, selected some black tea, which is classic. It might have some extra spices in it, because I think it's a brand.
Speaker 2:That's winter brand. I think I can taste some cinnamon in it as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's meant to usher in the beautiful fall, although it's still pretty warm here in Detroit. So I'm again so excited to have you here on the podcast today, particularly because you are the first guest we're having for our fifth season of the podcast, which is so exciting. We invited you particularly on today to share a bit about our new core values. So as we started this academic year, we had new core values introduced to our community. They were voted on and approved by our board of trustees in June and so they are official official is what I'll say so I'm just very excited to have you here as the VP of Mission Integration. Obviously, you've been an integral part in helping us to curate and formulate these core values with the mission effectiveness team, which I sit on as a member, and it was just a really fun process. So I wanted to bring you on to share a bit more about the core values with our community and also about the process. I've received feedback. We did a professional development during colleague development days around the core values and got the feedback that people really enjoyed learning about what our process was from the perspective of mission effectiveness and mission integration, in kind of formulating these core values.
Speaker 1:I'll start by sharing what are the core values with our community. So I'm going to read you just the short forms. We have longer articulations of these particular core values and we also have some underpinning values that fall into these values, to kind of round them out and to share a bit more about what they are. But I'll read you just the short form first, which is educating the whole person, cultivating a diverse community, embodying mercy and compassion, fostering faith and justice, serving and leading in Detroit. So these five core values are going to be kind of our roadmap as we navigate community and life here at Detroit Mercy. Navigate community and life here at Detroit Mercy. So I want to start by asking you know we have these new core values. Can you tell me a little bit more about them?
Speaker 2:Actually they are not new. It is just newly articulated as part of the continuous improvement process. Just the language in which we were emphasizing what we are about and this has been a long process of continuous reviewing and revisiting that dates back to the consolidation, and by the consolidation is when the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and the Society of Jesus, popularly known as Jesuits, came together to establish what we now have as the University of Detroit Mercy in 1990. And in 1990, the values that were articulated are very, very the same and they are at the core of these newly articulated core values. The only difference I want to emphasize is that we are beginning the core values with emphasizing action verbs, because often values are words that live on a theoretical level and people do not live them. So we and this is something novel and this is something that is unique about University of Detroit Mercy's values that we emphasize the verbs, which means action.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. No, I appreciate you emphasizing that these values have always been a part of our Detroit Mercy story, but they've been re-articulated, or newly articulated, as you said, for us to see them in a new way and to prioritize the action element of them. Can you talk to me a little bit about the process of how we came up with? I know I can also share my own insights, but, from your perspective, how did we come up with this particular set of five and the language that's used in these five core values?
Speaker 2:There has always been a desire to have a shared language, given that we are a university that is blessed with resources from the two sponsoring traditions the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and the Jesuits and there has a desire to have a common set of values, because the common set values are that which inform a community, that which inform the way of life of a culture, and so, as a university culture, we needed to be able to braid the two traditions in such a manner that is unique to us. It's like a child coming of age, a child of two parents, but then they have their own identity that somehow resembles one parent or the other, but then they are unique. So that process, now that we are since the consolidation, we are 30-something years old, we have come of age, and so this process the two years that I have been here, I have seen it come to maturity and there have been many players, particularly the Mission Effectiveness Team, which is a group of about 12 persons who represent every college, the eight colleges we have. There has been a representative and every division and they were able to collate, bring together what they articulate in their respective colleges and respective divisions and administrative units. They were able to identify what values or their specific mission, and then, as part of that collation, we were able to figure out what is it that is common and, at the same time, we were very attentive to be faithful to the two founding traditions, the Sisters of Mercy and the Jesuits, and what universal Catholicism teaches us. So we were able to braid all those us.
Speaker 2:So we were able to braid all those, and this was a process that involved community sessions, there were meetings, there were consultations, and then it came down to the wordsmithing, and the wordsmithing at the very end. I can't say it was bloody, but it came out. You know, words take us where we do not want to go, and if you look at even just the differences that we have in terms of the constitution and in terms of the proceedings we have in any gathering of people because words are the formulation of what people are about, and even I normally joke between the Orthodox Catholicism and Roman Catholicism that which divided us was language, and it came down to words, and which words do you choose? And so it was amazing that the members of the mission effectiveness team who steered the process were able to find common ground, and the common ground is what brought forth this emphasis of action verbs. But then, at the same time, the phrases are forward long. So we talk of educating the whole person, cultivating a diverse community, embodying mercy and compassion, fostering faith and justice.
Speaker 2:The only exception is the last one serving and leading in Detroit. Does that answer?
Speaker 1:Yes, no. That answers it very well, and, as a person who sat through all of the meetings on the wordsmithing, I can share that it was definitely, as you use the word, bloody. It was definitely a very good space of us trying to be incredibly mindful of how a variety of different people would receive this particular language. How are we being mindful of the way we say you know faith and justice? We spend a lot of time talking about faith and justice. Is it faith for justice, similar to some of the Jesuit language? How are we articulating this in a way that encourages the community to buy into these sort of or to feel that they can find home in these values, no matter what their background is, what their role at the university is, where they come from, what their religious tradition is?
Speaker 1:And so I appreciate the mindfulness that our team approached in cultivating this particular language and trying to be thoughtful of how it was going to be received, Because, like you said, in the example of the Constitution or the way in which we could use scripture, People interpret language in so many different ways, and so how are we approaching putting this particular language together in order to have it be interpreted in the way that we were hoping it would be interpreted. You know we were mindful of like how are we conveying this? And so I definitely think that answers it. But that leads kind of into my second question, which is specifically about how did we infuse Jesuit and Mercy language into these core values. I think some people that I've spoken to when I've shared about what our process was really appreciated hearing how we came to this formulation of core values.
Speaker 2:Anna, just to piggyback on what you emphasized in terms of welcoming. It's a welcoming tradition, and truly being inclusive. And inclusive is being Catholic with a small C and Catholic with a big C. Everything we do is because we are Catholic with a bigC, but then we have a big tent, and that language of inclusion is what made it possible to come up with a rephrasing, a reframing of the values that guide us in a manner that anyone who comes to this university as an employee, as a student, even as an alum, to be able to identify with these values. And so we stepped away from jargon. Jargon is good for its own sake. So, for instance, jesuits will speak of cura personalis, but that's an internal language to those who do Jesuit speak, and it's Latin for care for the whole person, and so why can't we just make that accessible, not only people who have Latin? So why can't we make that accessible? And that's why we emphasized educating the whole person.
Speaker 2:And then in our mercy tradition and mercy is not something that is unique to the Sisters of Mercy or to Catholicism Every religious tradition out there and human beings at our very best, we always embody empathy, we try to enter into other people's experience, and that way we are able to come up with structures that liberate them, and that's why we put in embodying mercy and compassion. And then, all these things, we do not do them in isolation. We are part of a community, and even in Catholicism we are not saved alone, and that's why we struggle to transform structures. Structures are needed as long as they are human beings, but then structures have been made by fallible, mortal human beings, and so they need to continue to improve those and to recognize the richness that is there in our diversity. That's why we emphasize, we cultivate a diverse community. Everyone brings something unique about themselves as individuals, the persons that God created them to be. They bring something of the richness of their cultures. They bring something of the richness of their faiths. You just have to look at the names. When the names, when the names are read during our graduation ceremonies, oh my God, there's people from every part of the globe, and Detroit Mercy is one of those gems that we are very proud of, who we are as a diverse community, and it's one thing to be diverse, but it's quite another to be inclusive.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and that's why we are emphasizing. We have to cultivate that diversity, then, in terms of just commitment to the city that we are in. That which brought the Sisters of Mercy and the Jesuits together in 1990 was commitment to the city of Detroit, and the commitment arises out of the faith tradition that our founders belong to, the Catholic faith tradition. Tradition that our founders belong to the Catholic faith tradition that emphasizes a way in which we have right relationships with one another, a way in which we reconcile each other, and so our presence in Detroit, which is part of our DNA, has to be part of reconciling this city and part of transforming this city. I think these are ways in which inclusion and people, regardless of whether you are Catholic or you are attracted by the masses or you are attracted by the Jesuit spirit, these are ways in which it is all inviting. But do you want me to speak about more specifics, about the priorities of Jesuits and the priorities of the Sisters of Mercy?
Speaker 1:I think it'd be nice to kind of draw in the UAPs, which stands for Universal Apostolic Preferences and the Critical Concerns of the Sisters of Mercy Anna.
Speaker 2:let me just stop you there.
Speaker 1:That is where the part of the problem is Okay, tell me, why is that part of the?
Speaker 2:problem what you talk of UAPs and critical concerns, now you end up doing Jesuit speak and mercy speak.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:And those are the things we were trying to transcend. It's not that we are ignoring, we're trying to transcend those, but include the priorities. So, when you will hear, with sessions for Mission Deep Dive that we will offer and I offer here as the mission officer is what are the priorities of our religious sponsors and so the priorities of the Sisters of Mercy? We often refer to them as critical concerns of our day and the priorities of Jesuits we always refer to them as the universal apostolic preferences. Okay, but those are all mouthfuls.
Speaker 1:They are mouthfuls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but now specifically so. For instance, when we speak of the critical concerns or the priorities for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the things that they ask anyone who is involved with the Mercy Way or the Mercy tradition, what we have to put front and center in making our decisions and priorities. We have to pay attention to the situation of women, because that is at the very core of the foundation of the Sisters of Mercy in Dublin, very core of the Foundation of the Sisters of Mercy in Dublin. Then, how do we end wars, guns, gun violence? Can we let us pursue non-violent options? Then the care for the earth, the urgent care for the earth, and then how we discriminate against each other.
Speaker 2:Yet you know, the gift of God is our diversity. And so racism. How do we move in such a manner that racism no longer exists, but an appreciation of the diverse persons that we are? And then immigration, immigration. Particularly here, in our days, in the political dispensation we live in, immigration has become a challenge. Yet human beings, by the mere fact that we are biped and we can walk, and the way this earth has been developed, is people moving.
Speaker 2:So those are the priorities of the Sisters of Mercy and the priorities of Jesuits and these are priorities of Jesuits globally. And so every work that advances the priorities of Jesuits has to take into account the following four Showing a way to God and it is showing a way to God or showing a way to Jesus Christ. Showing a way to truth, because Jesus is the truth, the life and the way, but through a process called discernment, but that again is Jesuit jargon. And then working with those whose dignity has been violated, but in a manner in which we promote reconciliation and justice, accompanying young people, that which we do here every day, but in creation of a hope-filled future. And then the common care of our home. So you will notice that these priorities of these two religious orders, they intersect and they are areas of commonality. And so what we did when we articulated our values, we braided these two and found language that integrates, not if you counted, not nine things, but the five phrases that we ended up with.
Speaker 1:No, thank you for articulating that, and I appreciate the clarification or the movement towards just saying these are the priorities, because that's language that our community understands, and then articulating that the priorities for the judges are called this and the priorities for the Sisters of mercy are often called this.
Speaker 1:That's helpful, I think, in, like you said, articulating especially, I think, for myself as somebody who works in mission and that's the heart of what I do here I am guilty of not always remembering that that language is not as approachable for everybody because it's language I have to use all the time. But it is helpful to have other language and that's why we wanted to create core values that use, like you said that. I love the imagery of braiding together what is our tradition that comes from the Jesuits? What is our tradition that comes from the Jesuits? What is our tradition that comes from the Sisters of Mercy, and how does that come together to create Detroit Mercy's tradition and what we are about as a community, not to say that it's just two pieces being braided together, but there's also that third strand of like who are we as Detroit Mercy?
Speaker 2:Yes, and what each one brings to the mission Right, yes, and actually one brings to the mission Right, yes, and actually, anna, you get it. The whole thing is that people come into mission through a variety of ways, and it's okay, in terms of the language, that you begin speaking as a person who speaks more than one language. If you only speak one language, then you have a challenge, but if you speak multiple languages, you can go back and forth, but then you enter through. At times, we learn a new language through one of the languages that you know. You know, as a Lonergan scholar. We always speak of figuring out the unknown through the known. Yeah, so there are people who will be attracted to our mission and they will enter through the Catholic lens because we are Catholic, and then, when they are here, they discover the ingredients that make us unique.
Speaker 2:There are people who will come to this because they are passionate about Jesuits and they will not know about the other riches. Or they are passionate about Jesuits and they will not know about the other riches, or they are passionate about the mercy way and they will not realize that we have an abundance of riches. Yes that's why we are unique. It's what's our identity.
Speaker 1:It's my favorite part of working here. As somebody who's worked in a lot of other Jesuit higher education spaces All wonderful and have served me so well. I love having a university that has this dual charism. I think it adds a layer for me just personally, to seeing a wider variety of what education can look like for young people. Even though I don't consider myself an educator in the traditional sense, I commend all of our faculty for what they do.
Speaker 1:I am not gifted in being a faculty member I don't wish to be, but it is really powerful to have multiple perspectives to kind of pull from and still it's all integrated into who we are as Detroit Mercy. It's one of the things that I love most about working here. I'd love to move towards a question about the core values. As we said, this articulation of them is new for our community and we're only a few weeks into the semester, so it's still fairly new. So I'd love to ask the question of how you think these core values will impact our community as we integrate them more into the language that we use when we talk about our time at Detroit Mercy.
Speaker 2:You know the impact has been. We do not want UDM or University of Detroit Mercy to be the best kept secret. What is it that is the people talk of? The secret sauce, the secret sauce.
Speaker 2:Yes or what is it that? What are the ingredients that make us who we are, so that we develop that Titan pride and we are proud of our identity, for who we are. So that will be the largest impact. This will help us be proud of our identity, that. This will help us be proud of our identity, our uniqueness among the 28, 27 Jesuit universities and among the 17 mercy universities and among the 200 Catholic universities in this country and the 4,000 also universities in this country and in the globe. What is it that makes us who we are? And so, if there's going to be the biggest impact is that our community will be able to develop that sense of Titan pride and what it means to be a Titan. Yeah, and then just to amplify, to bring out that which the University of Detroit Mercy offers the region, the nation and the globe yeah.
Speaker 1:Great, thank you. Another thing kind of along the same lines of our community and implementation of the core values. What is it that we want the community to know about in terms of implementation and living out these core values? What do we want them to know or kind of take away, even if it's just from this episode?
Speaker 2:No, this, and I applaud you for putting together this episode, because this episode in itself is one way of disseminating this new language and it's a if we understand what is it that makes our university culture. It helps us to have a unity of spirit and purpose. It helps us to overcome the silos, given that we are four campuses, eight colleges and we are a growing university. But what is it that will make us work together as a dynamic force? So there will be various opportunities. So every public forum that we have held since the academic year began, we used the opportunity to speak about our shared values, what it is. We remind ourselves what it is that we are about. There were highlights of this.
Speaker 2:Very soon I will do a presentation to the University Leadership Council on the core values and you, anna, you are awesome and fantastic. During the colleague development days, you did a session to educate our community. You will find them on our website. There are faculty who are going to offer courses and build this in their courses, and very soon you will see around campus we will have pull-up banners with our core values. We have bookmarks, and all these are efforts towards speaking a common language, a common language that we have all put together and to familiarize ourselves with this, and I have recruited all the deans into helping to popularize or to advance these values, and so there'll be programming.
Speaker 2:Watch out, for I'm asking the listeners to watch out, particularly we members of the university and our alums. Watch out. There'll be many programming options and the opportunities for us to learn what we have shared in this podcast.
Speaker 1:Great, thank you. I think one of the other things even in just the short time that we've been sharing these with the community seeing how others interpret them in their work and in their roles I think during the Colleague Development Day, most of the presentation I gave was really actually not a presentation. My presentation was pretty short, but it was an opportunity for people to sit down and talk in small groups with members across different parts of our university to share about how do you see yourself and your role at the university, your work, coming to life in these values. What values do you see?
Speaker 1:And I think one of the things that I appreciated that was shared by so many is that it was really hard.
Speaker 1:I was asking them in the prompt to just choose one and they had a.
Speaker 1:They had a hard time choosing one, but I appreciated that. They said that it was hard to choose one because of how they build on each other, how we can't just have educating for the whole person. We have to look at educating for the whole person and look at it from the perspective of cultivating a diverse community. We can't be about embodying mercy and compassion without fostering faith and justice, and then all in the context of serving and leading in Detroit, and so I appreciated in those conversations and some of our colleagues' articulation of how the values impacted them and their roles at the university as being about more than just one singular one, even if they have one that they're more drawn to. They all articulated that they saw the interweaving of these five as being you can't. None of them can stand alone. They can have purpose on their own and they can be a statement, but what makes them special, what makes them this shared language, is that we need all five to really operate to the fullness of our potential.
Speaker 2:Anna, the examples that you have given, arising from the presentation that you did, reveals to us what it means to get it right. So when employees can be able to identify what they do in either all the five or in an aspect of these values, it means that we have got it right. But if people were not able to to identify what they do and resonate with the way it is articulated, then it's as if we are trying to impose something new, and that's why I keep emphasizing this is who we are. So it is not that this is something that came out of, dropped out of the sky and was imposed. No, it's just for us as an effort to articulate the ingredients that make UDM special.
Speaker 1:For sure, and I hope that we'll be able I know we will be able to do some similar programming with our students and help them to see how their experience as a student at Detroit Mercy they can also see themselves in these five values. I know I'm going to shameless plug. It's not so shameless because I said I'm doing it. This episode is coming out during our Founders Week and one of the events during Founders Week on Wednesday, september 24th is an intercultural tea party that University're uh university ministry is hosting and as a part of that tea party we are actually going to be sharing about the five different values. Um, we'll have five tables. Each one will have one of the values at the table.
Speaker 1:Uh, we'll have students from our different cultural clubs sharing a bit about um their club, but also sharing a bit about their club, but also sharing a bit about the core value that they were assigned. So they are going to share what it is what it's about and there'll be some activity for each student who comes to that table to learn and articulate for themselves what that core value is about. And then the fun tea party aspect of it is that every table will have some sort of cultural drink and a small bite like a little appetizer. So that's going to be one way. I'm just telling all of our students who are listening that you can get involved. That's on Wednesday, september 24th, in the Fountain Lounge at 4.30 pm. So we hope you'll join us for that, to learn a little bit more about the core values and also to witness one of them being lived out in real time, which is cultivating a diverse community and sharing our cultural backgrounds with one another.
Speaker 2:Awesome, that's really awesome. Thank you for putting in that plug for something that we all have to look forward to and a way of inculcating these values to our student body. In addition to the curriculum offerings, this is part of the co-curriculum how we celebrate who we are and, at the same time, we learn about ourselves.
Speaker 1:I just have one more question for you which ties into our theme for the year. So we, every year, as we start the academic year, we pick a theme to flow from our Celebrate Spirit Mass, which this year is Sustaining a Spirit of Hope. As we enter into this academic year with the theme of sustaining a spirit of hope, how can we use the core values as a tool to live that theme out?
Speaker 2:Actually, the theme helps us to answer the why. Why five core values? Why do we have to educate the whole person? Why have we to embody mercy and compassion? Why foster faith and justice? Why serve, why cultivate, all with the intention of transforming not just the city, the region and the globe. And to be able to do that, you have to be hopeful that everything that we do will bear results. Otherwise why do it Right? Everything that we do will bear results.
Speaker 2:Otherwise why do it? Yeah, and in connection with this, in two years' time we will be celebrating 150 years of our existence.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And it's not just 150 years of our existence, but it's a continuation of all the years that the Sisters of Mercy have been around and the Jesuits have been around, and an event that happened for those of the Christian tradition who are listening an event that happened on Pentecost Sunday Pentecost 50 days after the resurrection, the closest friends and disciples of Jesus were sent out. They were missioned to transform the world, to feed the poor, to bring justice, to set prisoners free. That is why we do this and we need hope and we have to sustain that hope. If we cannot do it, let us close shop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have no reason to be in existence so we're coming towards the end of our podcast and something we ask every guest that comes on our podcast is two questions about mission, and we wrote them to be very vague because we get all different people to come be guests on our podcast Some who have more mission background, some who have more mission language in their toolkit already, and some that are developing that as they're students here, as they're working in different areas across our various campuses. And so the two questions we ask all of our guests who come on the podcast are what is your favorite part of the mission of the University of Detroit Mercy, and what motivates you personally to live that mission out? So I'll start with that first question what is your favorite part of the mission of the university?
Speaker 2:My favorite part is to be able to advance the mission and to get people to understand and know why we exist and why we need to responsibility, to be able to share and teach and promote and educate, and then to live this, which the way our faculty, our staff and administrators live this. This is just part of their being in terms of the ethos that how we serve one another, how we reach out to one another, and to be part of the being in terms of the ethos that how we serve one another, how we reach out to one another, and to be part of the team that advances. This makes me very excited.
Speaker 1:Great. And then what motivates you personally to live this mission out?
Speaker 2:It's a vocation, A consecrated person, a religious of 37 years. It is what I've given my life to to see people's lives transformed, to see development and change in this world, not in the next, in this world, to see people be happy. That is what motivates me and that I am part of the group that plants the seed or waters or nurtures people's growth and development.
Speaker 1:So now we're moving to one of my favorite parts of our podcast, which is our lightning round. This is meant to be the section of our podcast where we just get to know you a little bit better, some of the fun, quirky, fun facts that people wouldn't normally ask you. So we have a series of questions. I'm going to rapid fire them at you. Answer the first thing that comes to mind. I will give you the warning that our last question is always what's the best advice you've ever received, and that tends to be a little bit of a longer answer. So don't worry if you can't answer that in a couple of words or a small phrase, but we'll start in just a moment. Are you feeling ready?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, perfect Okay.
Speaker 1:So let's start our lightning round, sweet or salty.
Speaker 2:Sweet and sour.
Speaker 1:Sweet and sour. Okay, good to know. What is your favorite color currently?
Speaker 2:Periwinkle.
Speaker 1:Periwinkle, I love it, mountains or beaches.
Speaker 2:Both, both, but I prefer mountains.
Speaker 1:Prefer mountains. Okay, what is one of your favorite things about the city of Detroit?
Speaker 2:Resilience and grit Great.
Speaker 1:What is your favorite place on our campuses? So it could be any of our campuses, one of your favorite places?
Speaker 2:There's the Chapel of the Holy Spirit hidden in the basement. I think it's the admission area, or is it this university ministry out there? Yeah, and there is sort of a the hallway of study rooms. Yes.
Speaker 1:Leading down to it.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:In the student union. Yeah, it is a beautiful chapel, current favorite saint.
Speaker 2:Augustine.
Speaker 1:Augustine, okay, do you prefer spring, summer, fall or winter, essentially favorite season?
Speaker 2:Fall.
Speaker 1:Fall. That one's mine too. Which famous person would you like to sit down and have a meal with? And this could be someone who's dead or alive.
Speaker 2:Nelson Mandela.
Speaker 1:Oh, that would be a great choice. What's one place you want to visit and haven't yet?
Speaker 2:Hawaii.
Speaker 1:Hawaii. Okay, and then do you prefer sunsets or sunrises?
Speaker 2:Sunrises.
Speaker 1:Sunrises. And then last one is what's the best advice you've ever received?
Speaker 2:Be yourself.
Speaker 1:I like that Wonderful. Well, thank you for participating in our lightning round. I hope our listeners learn something new about you. Like that. Your favorite color is periwinkle.
Speaker 2:That's a great favorite color.
Speaker 1:Also. It's such a fun word and again I just want to thank you, father Charles, for being on the podcast today, for sharing about the process of how we came to this shared language and these shared values, the thought process that the Mission Effectiveness team took in creating these, and how we came to this language through hearing from our community members, getting feedback from people looking into our histories, looking at the language used by the Jesuits and the Sisters of Mercy. I just really appreciate you coming and further articulating what these are about and why we're excited about them, why we're hopeful that our community can see themselves in them and as we continue to implement them and make them more visible on campus. I'm just really hopeful and really grateful to have you be on this podcast and share a little bit more, as one of those ways you said as implementing this language into our community more.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, Anna, for inviting me to be part of this. Yeah, you are doing a good job in disseminating this newly articulated language. Thank you.
Speaker 1:That was a really wonderful conversation that I got to have with Father Charles. I so appreciated the way he articulated the core values and how we came to this particular set of five. I appreciated him reminding me about the fact that, other than our final one serving and leading Detroit, that we were very intentional about trying to choose a format of four words. I kind of forgot that that was part of the process, but I really enjoyed just having an opportunity to share more about the core values. As somebody who was involved in helping to curate this particular list, I do have a strong sense of pride in them and I really appreciate the way that I think they're going to be lived out in our community and how we approach this with a lot of intention and inclusivity. So I'm hoping every member of our community and those beyond our community see the value in these values, see the potential they have for us to have language that unites our two charisms but also speaks to who we are as members of the University of Detroit Mercy. So just really thankful. Again, I'm thankful for you all to listen and I hope you're all having a great day.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to what's the tea with ministry if you enjoyed listening to us today. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Also, be sure to follow us on social media at udm underscore ministry, or check us out at the what's the tea with ministry podcast on the detroit mercy website. Thank you to our guest, father Charles Aduke, for being in conversation with me today. Thank you also to all those who made this podcast possible, especially the Communication Studies Department, our sound engineer, michael Jason, our music composer, dan Gregg, marketing and Communications and the whole Detroit Mercy community. We look forward to sharing more of the mission with you next time. See you later.