Interview of Thomas Bausch, WUJA Chairman, by Michel Jadot (Bruxelles)

Michel Jadot : Tom, you were just appointed as the new chairman of WUJA. What are your first impressions ?
Thomas Bausch : The members of WUJA who were present in Bujumbura have honored me and I feel very humble as I reflect on all of the wonderful and committed people I have met. I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with the other officers, the members of the World Council, and all of the others involved with WUJA and the various federations and confederations around the world. I am deeply grateful for the support from Father General, his delegate, Father Pierre, and all of the other Jesuits interested in and committed to the work of WUJA. All of us who are officers have a great obligation and beautiful opportunity to facilitate and enable our alumni and alumnae across the globe to show our gratitude for our Jesuit education through working together, however we are called, for the Greater Honor and Glory of God. May I prove worthy in my role.

Michel Jadot : Could you say a few words about yourself (including, as the cases may be, your family, your profession and your link with the Society of Jesus and its alumni) ?
Thomas Bausch : I am an 1960 alumnus of John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio USA. John Carroll was the first Catholic bishop in the USA, a Jesuit utitil the Suppression, and a member of an important colonial family. His cousin signed our Declaration of Independance. After earning my BS degree in Economics I moved on to Indiana University and earned the MBA and PhD in International Business. After earning my degrees I returned to John Carroll as an assistant and associate professor of economics and assistant dean and after serving at Bradley University as Dean in 1978 I moved on to Marquette University as Dean of the College of Business Administration and after 15 years as Professor of Social Issues in Management and of Global Strategy. In 1993 I was co-founder of the International Association of Jesuit Business Schools and served as its Executive Director for ten years. I have been teaching a summer seminar in Pastoral Leadership and Management at the Hekima College of Theology in Nairobi. I have served as a consultant, visiting professor, or speaker at several Jesuit universities in the USA, Belgium, Spain, Lebanon, India, Cameroon, Mexico, Taiwan, Indonesia, Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela. I hope all of these experiences with Jesuit education around the world helps me to serve WUJA.
In addition, I have been a member of Christian Life Community, formerly Sodality, for 53 years. I have served in several positions as an officer. Most importantly, it is this relationship that has brought the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius into my life as a vibrant force, both personally and professionally.
The civilizing force in my life for 47 years has been my wife Bernadine (Bernie) and God has blessed us with eight fantastic children, all of whom have a Jesuit education, and, to date, 14 grandchildren. Extensive profit and not-for-profit board experience broadens what I hope I can contribute to WUJA. With many of my brother and sister alums from across the world I share the privilege of belonging to Rotary International.

Michel Jadot : How would you define the ignacian specificity ? What makes us different from others ? After all, are we better than the others of just different ?
Thomas Bausch : Ignatian spirituality is but one flower of spirituality, a very beautiful one, in a lush and extensive garder of flowers of spiritualities that come to us through the Holy Spirit. Just as I was called to the married life and to a vocation in the academic life, so I was called to Ignatian spirituality and I am deeply grateful for this call as well as to the many Jesuits and others who nursed me along over the years. Just as every flower in a garden has its source of life in the same sun, so in even a deeper manner, every spiritualiity has its source in the same God, and I refer not just to spiritualities within the Catholic Church, but to all spiritualities. Each of us is called to allow God to develop ourself as fully as possible in the image he had in our creation and this may be Franciscan, Dominican or Ignatian; or Hindu, Moslem and Jewish. In WUJA we are called to enable every jesuit graduate, and those we serve, to develop their full human dignity.
I am specifically attracted to Ignatian spirituality for living in today’s world because it begins by asking for a deep sense of self-knowledge, good and bad, is a call to find God in all things, asks me to strive to be a contemplative in action, challenges me to a total commitment of self to serving God through serving others, and is universal. This is a powerful paradigm as one faces the needs of today’s world.

Michel Jadot : What is, in your eyes, the role of WUJA, towards the alumni, towards the schools and toward the Society of Jesus? What are, in your eyes, the main challenges ahead of WUJA on these fronts ?
Thomas Bausch : In the above answer I have stated our obligation to enable every single alum of a Jesuit institution to develop their human dignity. Our role in regard to our schools is two-fold. First, we must enable all of our schools to serve better their current students and their alums, to offer richer programing that enables graduates to be what we all envision, “men and women for others” to mean in the concrete circustances of the times in which we live. Second, we have a special obligation to aid our schools that are serving the poor and the marginalized; that is, to live very specifically in our context “the option for the poor”. If we do not value our Jesuit education enough to desire to give it to others, we do not value this education. I am not well-informed on all that our alums do across the globe, but my limited experience with what our alums are doing in Kenya, Chile, India, Hong Kong, and the USA inspires me. We need to publicize what Jesuit grads are doing to aid Jesuit endeavors in order to inspire others to go and do the same. Our relationship with the Jesuits needs to develop in a mature manner as a two-way street. In Congregations 34 and 35 the Society has forcefully articulated their priorities and are clear that they need partners as they serve God, Church and World. We are called to be among these partners. On the other hand, as we were so often told, our formal education in a Jesuit institution was just the beginning of learning and growing. We all need Jesuit support as we attempt to become the fullness of self that God intended. We are interdependent.
As to challenges, let me be quite blunt. As trite as it might be to say so, our need for financial resources is second only to our need for God’s grace. Without doubt, God’s grace is present! If we are to make the global body of Jesuit alums a force for the greater honor and glory of God, we need to develop a solid financial base. And the only sustainable source of resources is us – the Jesuit alumni and alumnae. Second, we need to find better methods for organizing ourselves to enable our scattered alums to serve in an increasingly global and mobile society and economy. There are major cities without Jesuit educational presence. Or even where there is Jesuit educational presence, like in London, New York,or Mumbai there are probably alums from 100 or more Jesuit institutions. How do we enable these alums to network, support one another, share their values, and serve? Doing this is simply a response to the call of Vatican II! Any sensible Christian anthropology recognizes that the human is social and that to grow we need each other, especially those that share our values and world vision.

Michel Jadot : Tom, how do you see the role of the chairman within WUJA? The boss, the stimulator, the coordinator, …? What do you expect from the members of your bureau ?
Thomas Bausch : When I teach my management classes I tell my students that if they are going to read only one book on leadership that theyshould read Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf. My role, the role of all of us in leadership positions in WUJA, is to serve and enable others to accomplish great work, to become more fully the person each can be. If one reads a second book on leadership, it should be Heroic Leadership by Chris Lowney. He spells out what it means to be a servant leader in an Ignatian context. Servant leadership is not fuzzy claptrap, it is the hard stuff of organization, finance, logistics, planning and so on that enables others to act and work together or, in the words of Greenleaf, to become leaders themselves.

Michel Jadot : WUJA is supposed to act as a catalyst between the associations and federations, ie to stimulate horizontal connections in the structure, to leverage on the network. Is this a common behavior in the USA ? Do the associations not tend to act vertically and to focus on THEIR school and THEIR alumni (that happen to be the sponsors of THEIR school) ? Am I right and, if yes, how do you intend to deal with this issue ?
Thomas Bausch : Just as all individuals carry the baggage of their history and background, so do all organizations carry the baggage of their history and background, as well as all of the success and accomplishment. Jesuit universities, colleges and high schools in the USA were not started as a network, but rather to respond city by city to very specific needs of the immigrant church in that locality and often at the specific invitation of the bishop of that place. If one grew up in a Polish parish in Chicago, he was considered exotic if he married a Polish girl from another parish, a traitor if he married a Catholic Italian girl, and damned to hell, except maybe for the grace of God, if he married a Lutheran girl. Our Catholic, including Jesuit, schools were in no way financed by government money, although it was G.I. bill money that funded the huge influx of Catholic veterans into our institutions after World War II and enabled their growth and was part of the process of Catholics breaking out of their ghettos. Identity and self-image began to be very much associated with the schools we attended and even to the accomplishments of our football and basketball teams. All of this created a culture and a parochialism as a by-product of alumni activity that enabled our schools to survive and thrive financially and is part of who we are today and we must not deny that all of this accomplished great good.
I do not think that this culture of institutional loyalty can or should be weakened rather, it must serve as a foundation upon which to build in the USA the horizontal connections you mention. Doing this is a very high priority for me. A solution comes done to one question. How does WUJA provide, and let our alums know it provides, a value added that enables our High Schools and Universities, through their alumni (ae) associations to serve better their current students and alums as they “become men and women for others”? If our schools were not serious about this vision of service, the task would be hopeless. Thankfully, it is my observation that our Jesuit institutions and alums in the USA are true to this vision. So let us work with them by helping to meet the goal of graduates who are in service to others.

Michel Jadot : The number of associations is high? Is it important for WUJA to be directly visible to the associations or should WUJA rely on the confederations and the federations to implement its plan ?
Thomas Bausch : We have got to be visible not only to the associations, but to significant numbers of our alums! To draw and anology in regard to something of less priority to me as a Jesuit alumnus. I am very proud of being a member of the Rotary Club of Downtown Milwaukee, but primarily I am proud of being a Rotarian, that is of Rotary International. But the concrete reality of being Rotarian comes alive in the local club.

Michel Jadot : could you let us know two or three achievemnts you want to complete before the next congress in Medellin?
Thomas Bausch : I will provide six that are interrelated.

1. Act with results on the resolutions from the Congress in Burundi. We must walk our talk.
2. Put WUJA on a firm financial base.
3. Improve communications within the leadership of WUJA, with the various federations and countries, and with our individual members.
4. Make alumni communites available to more alums in cities and other places without Jesuit educational institutions.
5. Ensure that WUJA is an alive and meaningful presense in the USA and elsewhere where we are dormant.
6. Work with our Latin American members to achieve a successful Congress with a minimum of 500 persons in Medellin.

Michel Jadot : Tom, this is ambitious ! I am sure all our readers will feel happy about it and motivated to contribute to these challenging ambitionds. Many thanks for answering all my questions.