Dominican Receives Grant to Create ‘Culturally Responsive’ Campus Ministry Network

Dominican University has received a nearly $1.5 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to build a network of Catholic colleges and universities dedicated to culturally responsive campus ministry.

“Culturally responsive” campus ministry means understanding and incorporating the ways students engage with their faith, said John DeCostanza, Dominican’s assistant vice president for university ministry.

“It’s campus ministry that’s done with a lot of humility,” DeCostanza said. “We do our work by listening to our students, by engaging them in the things they care about and really learning about who they are as whole human persons: their culture, their racialized experiences in the United States, all of the ways their communities are affected by the world, all of those things matter. We seek to draw those things in and make it part of their regular theological reflection.”