Dedicated since its founding in 1789 to excellence in education that is rooted in service to the Church and to the democratic ideals of the new nation, Georgetown University begins the third millennium with a firmly grounded commitment to "justice and the common good," as its new mission statement proclaims. The Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service, which opened its doors in January 2001, is a concrete and imaginative manifestation of that commitment. With origins in the work of the Task Force on Social Justice and work for the Jesuit Colleges and Universities Conference on Justice at Santa Clara, this new Center has a mission that is simple to state but far-reaching in its implications:

"In order to advance justice and the common good, the Center promotes and integrates community-based research, teaching and service by collaborating with diverse partners and communities".

The Center is guided by that mission as it strives to consolidate and develop work in its key three areas: service, curriculum and research. First, it incorporates and builds on the vibrant student work of direct service and the learning it fosters, whether from tutoring and mentoring or arts education and job development training. Georgetown University has long been known for the compassionate service of its students. Two of the larger community service programs, for example, are the D.C. Schools Project, a nationally recognized program that trains more than 200 Georgetown students each year to spend four to six hours a week teaching immigrant students English and other subjects, and the D.C. Reads program (part of the national effort to recruit and train tutors to ensure that all students can read independently by the end of the third grade) which places an average of 200 Georgetown students each semester as volunteers or work-study tutors for young people in the District. But there are wonderfully creative, small programs as well --- from the After School Kids Program to Increase the Peace --- that provide Georgetown University students with opportunities to give of their time and talents to meet the needs of others. Overall there are some 30 student-run programs that provide varied opportunities for students to get involved.

Second, the Center promotes and helps develop curricular offerings that incorporate community-based work and service to justice. A number of Georgetown University faculty have designed courses that build in opportunities for direct or indirect service in the local community in a way that makes clear, for example, the intellectual context and the policy implications of the service the students render. Courses such as "Community Conflict Resolution" in the Sociology department and "Teaching/Literacy/Community Action" in the English department offer students curricular vehicles for providing service that is explored and deepened in the classroom. In addition, there are faculty each semester who are part of the Service-Learning Credit program, a national model and one of the first such university programs when it was founded over 20 years ago, whereby students earn one extra credit by linking a minimum of 40 hours of community-based work during a semester to a course in which they are enrolled. The new Center advances this curricular work through faculty workshops, course development grants, and continued support of conferences that enable more faculty to learn about the pedagogy of service learning and to redesign courses to incorporate it.

Third, the Center serves as a catalyst to consolidate and advance the exciting community-based research projects that have been most recently housed in the Center for Urban Research and Teaching, founded in 1997, and the 1999 program called PURS, Partners in Urban Research and Service-Learning, a collaborative project that brought together ten Georgetown social science faculty and community leaders to develop research projects serving the community. With the assistance of a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, PURS established the Georgetown Community Outreach and Partnership Center (GCOPC). GCOPC addressed a number of concerns related to neighborhood development, including the reduction of violence and crime among adolescents, the enhancement of planning and community organization, and the development of new neighborhood-based economic opportunities. The Center build on this work as it seeks to provide research opportunities for Georgetown University faculty and students to work in partnership with communities in the District to develop the assets the communities have and to bring needed resources to them in a mutually beneficial way.

All of the Center?s work is done in collaboration with other University offices, individuals and programs that seek to develop the University's work in justice and service, thereby making such work more visible, better coordinated and more fruitful. Ultimately, more students, faculty and staff will be able to channel their scholarly and personal energies into working creatively with others to make a difference with and for the residents in the District of Columbia's most challenged neighborhoods, and for those in the world beyond. Through such critical and engaged work in this propitious time, Georgetown will build on its tradition of academic excellence and will contribute in singular ways to the Jesuit ideal of justice education and action "for the glory of God and the well-being of humankind."