AXIS: Journal of Lasallian Higher Education

Why AXIS?

In June 2007, Superior General Brother Alvaro Rodriguez Echeverria told 54 participants in the first International Lasallian University Leadership Program in Rome that “…the exceptional growth of the Universities is a sign of the times for us…[Universities] are, in fact, like a miracle in our common history, a happening without precedent in our more than 350 years of service to society and the Church.”

In this context of opportunity Brother Alvaro asked the assembled academic administrators and faculty members from 15 institutions in eight nations to “re-imagine the dynamic role of the Lasallian Universities”, and shared a vision of three ‘axes’ of obligation and opportunity inherent to the unique position of institutions of Lasallian Catholic higher education within the global Lasallian family.

The colleges and universities that comprise the body of Lasallian Catholic higher education are diverse with respect to cultures, traditions, and education models. We identify with each other as ministries in the tradition of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and as communities of scholars associated along three axes of commitment: to a teaching excellence that sensitizes learners to injustice, to systematic application of research methods which fully describe and identify the causes of injustice in all its forms, and to committed action in solidarity with vulnerable and marginalized persons so that the justice necessary for universal human dignity becomes reality.

1. These commitments call our institutions:
   to investigate, develop, perfect and share instructional pedagogies that honor the Lasallian traditions of academic excellence rooted in informed sensitivity to contemporary social and political realities of our students, our communities and our world.
2. to apply research methods to systematically describe, explain and predict social injustice and inequality, and to create models which effect a more just world.
3. to “be ‘laboratories’ in which all participants encounter the destiny of humanity – institutions whose structures, policies and people invite all who pass through their doors to personal and professional engagement in the transformation of the world through peace, harmony, pursuit, acceptance, respect, compassion, solidarity and wisdom.” (Alvaro Rodriguez Echeverria, FSC, IALU, 2009)

Inspired by this hopeful vision represented in the burgeoning of Lasallian Catholic higher education, AXIS: Journal of Lasallian Higher Education is a vehicle by which diverse scholars can document and advance effective pursuit of our shared Lasallian mission to provide a human and Christian education to the poor and marginalized. AXIS is also an archive to enhance collective memory and shared stewardship of the Lasallian mission through dissemination of talks and presentations that illustrate significant moments in the Lasallian movement as they relate to Lasallian Catholic higher education.

Through the work of authors, reviewers and readers, AXIS should empower institutions of Lasallian Catholic higher education to be schools of communion, believing and Catholic, and therefore open to and seeking justice for all – Catholic, Christians of other churches, the faithful of other religions, non-believing humanists and to every human person.

Publishing Note:

After the journal launch in 2009, editorial management of AXIS shifted. No issues were published in 2010. Beginning with Volume 2:1, the Institute for Lasallian Studies of Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota assumed editorial leadership of the project and a new Editorial Board was constituted.