Scholarships & Mission Alignment
Creighton University's Commitment to Support Creighton's Jesuit, Catholic Mission and Identity in Funded, Non-Academic-Merit-Based Institutional Scholarships
As specifically outlined in Creighton University's Non-Discrimination Statement, the University is committed to providing a safe and non-discriminatory educational and employment environment.[1] The University admits qualified students, hires qualified employees and accepts patients for treatment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, marital status, national origin, age, disability, citizenship, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or other status protected by law.
Consistent with federal and state law and the University's policies, the University is committed to upholding principles of equality and non-discrimination in all of its activities and interactions. As demonstrated throughout this document, this commitment is fundamental within the Jesuit, Catholic Tradition and the mission-driven work of Jesuit higher education.
Given our institutional identity as a Jesuit, Catholic intellectual apostolate, we have a fundamental mission-driven responsibility:
- To accompany people with demonstrated adversity, which includes serving those who are poor, marginalized, or underserved,
- To foster our students' sense of a well-educated solidarity that honors human dignity and serves the common good, this includes a commitment to serve people and communities who are underserved, and
- To support first-generation students' access to a Creighton education.
These responsibilities are evidenced in myriad sources pertaining to Catholic Social Teaching, the mission of the Society of Jesus, and the work of Jesuit higher education, citations from which follow. Additionally, these responsibilities are reflected in three categories of funded, non-academic-merit-based institutional scholarships:
- Students with demonstrated adversity
- Students committed to serving people and communities who are underserved
- Students who are the first-generation from their families to attend postsecondary education
Scholarship Category 1: Students with Demonstrated Adversity
Catholic Social Teaching – "Option for the Poor and Vulnerable"
From the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' website:
"A basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. In a society marred by deepening divisions between rich and poor, our tradition recalls the story of the Last Judgment (Mt 25:31-46) and instructs us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first."
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: 2444, 2448:
"The Church's love for the poor . . . is a part of her constant tradition.' This love is inspired by the Gospel of the Beatitudes, of the poverty of Jesus, and of his concern for the poor. . . . 'Those who are oppressed by poverty are the object of a preferential love on the part of the Church which, since her origin and in spite of the failings of many of her members, has not ceased to work for their relief, defense, and liberation'."
The Contemporary Mission of the Society of Jesus
From GC 32 Decree 4 – "The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice":
20. There are millions of men and women in our world, specific people with names and faces, who are suffering from poverty and hunger, from the unjust distribution of wealth and resources and from the consequences of racial, social, and political discrimination. Not only the quality of life but human life itself is under constant threat.
42. Our faith in Christ Jesus and our mission to proclaim the Gospel demand of us a commitment to promote justice and to enter into solidarity with the voiceless and the powerless. This commitment will move us seriously to verse ourselves in the complex problems which they face in their lives, then to identify and assume our own responsibilities to society.
From Father General Arturo Sosa's letter introducing the Universal Apostolic Preferences of the Society of Jesus, speaking to UAP 2:
"To walk with the poor, the outcasts of the world, those whose dignity has been violated, in a mission of reconciliation and justice"
"Sent as companions in a mission of reconciliation and justice, we resolve to walk with individuals and communities that are vulnerable, excluded, marginalized, and humanly impoverished. We commit ourselves to walk with the victims of abuse of power, abuse of conscience, and sexual abuse; with the outcasts of this world; with all those whom the biblical tradition knows as the poor of the earth, to whose cry the Lord responds with his liberating incarnation."
"The path we seek to follow with the poor is one that promotes social justice and the change of economic, political, and social structures that generate injustice; this path is a necessary dimension of the reconciliation of individuals, peoples, and their cultures with one another, with nature, and with God."
"Care for indigenous peoples, their cultures, and their basic rights occupies a special place in our commitment . . . We confirm our commitment to care for migrants, displaced persons, refugees, and victims of wars and human trafficking . . . We commit ourselves to promoting a process of globalization that recognizes multiplicity of cultures as a human treasure, protects cultural diversity, and promotes intercultural exchange."
The Work of Jesuit Higher Education
From Father Ignacio Ellacuria's 1982 convocation address at Santa Clara University:
"A Christian university must take into account the Gospel preference for the poor. This does not mean that only the poor study at the university; it does not mean that the university should abdicate its mission of academic excellence—excellence needed in order to solve complex social problems. It does mean that the university should be present intellectually where it is needed: to provide science for those who have no science; to provide skills for the unskilled; to be a voice for those who do not possess the academic qualifications to promote and legitimate their rights."
From Father General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach's address to US Jesuit universities titled "The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice":
In the words of GC 34, a Jesuit university must be faithful to both the noun "university" and to the adjective "Jesuit." To be a university requires dedication "to research, teaching and the various forms of service that correspond to its cultural mission." To be Jesuit "requires that the university act in harmony with the demands of the service of faith and promotion of justice found in Decree 4 of GC 32."
From Father General Arturo Sosa's July 2025 address to International Jesuit Colleges and Universities (IAJU) titled "The Jesuit University: Witness to Hope, Creative and Dialogical Presence":
"Our identity calls us to be agents of hope, justice, dialogue, and reconciliation. These are distinctive marks of the universities of the Society of Jesus. The world does not need more fear or despair. When many are overwhelmed by the fear of losing everything, even life itself, or by a cynicism that twists the truth and a polarization that suffocates democracy, our universities must accompany our students and our societies with wisdom and hope, nurturing vision, resilience, and solidarity. . .
. . . To accompany young people requires more than providing psychological support, extracurricular activities, social service opportunities, and other dimensions of university life. For a Jesuit university, accompanying the young means forming students in hope, helping them to believe that a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world is possible, and encouraging them to play their role in building it.
This sort of accompaniment is possible if the university remains at the side of the excluded, those marginalized by poverty, race, migratory status, gender, or some other form of structural injustice. Our academic work, our advocacy, and our community life turn into voice and visibility for the forgotten."
As scholarships within the category of "demonstrated adversity" may invite particular reflection on one's personal lived experience, a note on the importance of lived experience and intentional reflection on it within the Jesuit, Catholic Tradition and Ignatian Spirituality:
Finding God in All Things is one of Creighton University's core Jesuit values and is a fundamental tenet in Ignatian spirituality. This value invites us to pay particular attention to our lived experiences and our interior reactions to these experiences, believing that God is present and active there. We are invited to exercise such attention through another of the University's core Jesuit values – Reflection and Discernment – for, reflecting, we are able to learn more about ourselves, about the world around us, and – importantly – about God. As we regularly exercise intentional reflection and develop a posture of perpetual attentiveness, we become better able to discern God's voice and recognize God's invitations that are unique to each of us.
Scholarship Category 2: Students Committed to Serving People and Communities Who Are Underserved
As each of us and our University have a mission-driven responsibility to serve the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable as highlighted above, it rightly follows that we have a responsibility to support, form, and accompany our students in living out core tenets of our mission, including but not limited to commitments to solidarity, service, and justice for all, including traditionally underserved groups. The sources noted above support this mission-central responsibility, as do the following, which are an extraordinarily modest sampling from an infinitely larger body of support:
From Father General Pedro Arrupe's 1973 address (to a group of all-male alumni) "Men for Others":
"Today our prime educational objective must be to form men for others; men who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ—for the God-man who lived and died for all the world; men who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for men is a farce."
From Father General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach's address "The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice":
"For 450 years, Jesuit education has sought to educate "the whole person" intellectually and professionally, psychologically, morally and spiritually. But in the emerging global reality, with its great possibilities and deep contradictions, the whole person is different from the whole person of the Counter-Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, or the 20th century. Tomorrow's "whole person" cannot be whole without an educated awareness of society and culture with which to contribute socially, generously, in the real world. Tomorrow's whole person must have, in brief, a well- educated solidarity.
We must therefore raise our Jesuit educational standard to "educate the whole person of solidarity for the real world." Solidarity is learned through "contact" rather than through "concepts," as the Holy Father said recently at an Italian university conference.24 When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Personal involvement with innocent suffering, with the injustice others suffer, is the catalyst for solidarity which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry and moral reflection.
Students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering, and engage it constructively. They should learn to perceive, think, judge, choose, and act for the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and the oppressed."
Scholarship Category 3: Students who are the First-Generation from their Families to Attend Postsecondary Education
When initially founded, the Jesuits did not intend to start and sustain schools; they sought to be mobile, available to go where the need was greatest, a mobility not possible within the educational ministry, as schools generally require a stationary location. However, within 10 years of their founding, the Jesuits pivoted, seeing in the educational ministry an opportunity to continue to serve their ultimate mission and to expand its reach by forming students who would go on to serve as leaders in various spheres in society. From very early on, Jesuit schools were open to the wealthy who traditionally had access to a formal education and to the poor whose families lacked prior formal access to an education. The later, now referred to as "first-generation" students, are an essential part of the mission of the Jesuit, Catholic tradition. Intentional availability to and support of first-generation students is a centuries-old commitment within Jesuit education, as highlighted in the excerpt below by notable Jesuit historian, Fr. John O'Malley:
From Fr. John O'Malley's address "How the First Jesuits Became Involved in Education"
"One of the special features of the Jesuit schools was that they were open to students from every social class. This was made possible by Ignatius's insistence that, in some fashion or other, the schools be endowed, so that tuition would not be necessary. In their ministries he wanted the Jesuits to minister to anybody in need, regardless of social status or socioeconomic class. Regarding the schools, he specifically enjoined that they be open "to rich and poor alike, without distinction."
Jesuit schools even in the beginning are usually described as catering to the rich, and there is no doubt that over the course of the years and then of the centuries most of the schools tended to move in that direction. But this was far, far from the original intention, never actualized in the degree usually attributed to it, and insofar as it occurred was the result not so much of deliberate choices as of the special nature of the humanistic curriculum. That curriculum postulated the Latin and Greek classics as its principal subject matter, with appreciation for literature and eloquence as its primary focus. Such an education simply did not appeal to many parents and potential students, who preferred a more "practical" education in the trades or in commercial skills. The same could be said a fortiori for the kind of training the universities offered. In any case, while the Jesuits of course had no idea of what we today call "upward social mobility," the schools in fact acted in some instances as an opportunity for precisely that. The Jesuits were aware of this reality and in a few instances had to defend themselves against critics who thought the prospect corrosive of the stability of society."
