YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia — For generations, universities around the world have regarded graduation as the culmination of a student’s educational journey. Diplomas are awarded, graduates enter professional life, and the relationship between institutions and their alumni often becomes limited to reunions, fundraising campaigns, or occasional homecomings.
Jesuit universities, however, are increasingly embracing a different vision—one that sees commencement not as the end of formation but as the beginning of a lifelong partnership in leadership, service, and mission.
That vision emerged during a session of the 11th World Union of Jesuit Alumni (WUJA XI) held on Friday, July 31, 2026, at the Driyarkara Auditorium, Universitas Sanata Dharma, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In separate presentations, Fr. Raymundus Benedict “RB” Hizon, SJ, Director of the Office of the University Development and Alumni Affairs at Ateneo de Manila University, together with Allison Morog, Jordan Glassman, and Josh Madrid, Ph.D., representing the Alpha Sigma Nu Honor Society, explored how Jesuit institutions can accompany graduates long after they leave campus, forming them as lifelong partners in the mission of faith, justice, and service.
Opening the session, Fr. Hizon reflected on the changing understanding of alumni engagement within Jesuit higher education. For many years, he explained, alumni relations were largely confined to organizing reunions, networking events, recollections during Advent and Lent, newsletters, and fundraising activities. While these initiatives maintained contact between universities and graduates, they rarely reflected a broader educational vision that extended beyond graduation.
The turning point came when Ateneo de Manila University integrated its alumni office with the university’s development office during a major capital campaign. What initially appeared to be an administrative restructuring soon evolved into a deeper institutional discernment about the purpose of alumni engagement within a Jesuit university.
Rather than asking how alumni could support the university, Fr. Hizon said, the institution began asking a more fundamental question: How should a Jesuit university continue accompanying its graduates throughout their lives?
To answer that question, the university partnered with its research office to conduct a comprehensive study of graduates approximately five years after completing their studies. The survey measured three key indicators: alumni satisfaction with their education, the strength of their continuing relationship with the university, and their willingness to recommend Ateneo to prospective students.
The findings challenged several long-held assumptions.
The strongest predictor of alumni engagement was neither campus infrastructure nor institutional prestige. Instead, graduates consistently identified Ignatian formation as the experience that most profoundly shaped their lives. Alumni who experienced deeper spiritual and personal formation expressed greater satisfaction with their education, maintained stronger ties with the university, and became its most committed ambassadors.
“The most important discovery,” Fr. Hizon explained, “was that alumni are not simply products of our university. They are partners in our mission.”
The research also highlighted another important insight: relationships matter more than buildings.
Graduates remembered professors, mentors, classmates, and campus ministers far more vividly than physical facilities. The experience reaffirmed one of the defining characteristics of Jesuit education—that authentic formation occurs primarily through accompaniment, personal care, and meaningful human relationships.
“People connect with people,” Fr. Hizon observed, summarizing a lesson that now shapes Ateneo’s evolving strategy for alumni engagement.
Based on these findings, the university has begun developing what he described as a lifelong alumni curriculum—an approach that accompanies graduates through different stages of personal, professional, spiritual, and family life. Rather than limiting alumni engagement to occasional reunions or fundraising campaigns, the initiative seeks to create an ecosystem of lifelong formation that continues long after students receive their diplomas.
While Fr. Hizon’s presentation focused on institutional strategy, representatives of the Alpha Sigma Nu Honor Society demonstrated how that vision has already been put into practice across Jesuit higher education in the United States.
Presented by Allison Morog, Jordan Glassman, and Josh Madrid, Ph.D., the session introduced Alpha Sigma Nu as the national honor society of Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States and the only honor society that recognizes the distinctive values of Jesuit education. Founded in 1915 at Marquette University, the organization has grown into a network that spans dozens of Jesuit institutions and connects more than 100,000 members.
Membership in Alpha Sigma Nu, the presenters explained, is not based solely on academic achievement. Students are selected because they demonstrate excellence in three enduring Jesuit ideals: scholarship, loyalty, and service. These values continue to shape members well beyond graduation, encouraging them to become leaders committed to serving both the Church and society.
Graduation, therefore, is not regarded as the completion of membership but as the beginning of a lifelong vocation within a community inspired by Ignatian spirituality.
Through mentoring initiatives, leadership formation, professional networking, retreats, discernment programs, and international collaboration, Alpha Sigma Nu seeks to accompany its members throughout their lives while fostering continued commitment to Jesuit values and service.
One example presented during the session came from Regis University in Colorado, where Alpha Sigma Nu members organized a campus-wide initiative on the global refugee crisis. The program combined public lectures, experiential learning inspired by the Jesuit Refugee Service, fundraising, and online dialogue with students participating in Jesuit Worldwide Learning programs in Kenya and Malawi.
The initiative illustrated how Jesuit leadership is formed not merely through classroom instruction but through encounter, discernment, solidarity, and concrete action in response to human suffering.
Although the two presentations approached the subject from different perspectives—one through institutional research and the other through lived experience—they converged on a common conviction.
Jesuit universities are increasingly moving beyond a traditional understanding of alumni relations centered on networking or philanthropy. Instead, they are embracing a model in which graduates remain lifelong companions in mission, continuing to grow intellectually, spiritually, professionally, and socially throughout their lives.
Such an approach reflects one of the central insights of Ignatian pedagogy: education is never confined to the years spent inside a classroom. Rather, it is a lifelong process of forming women and men for and with others—persons whose knowledge, faith, and leadership continue to mature in service of the common good.
As delegates from around the world gathered in Yogyakarta to reflect on the future of Jesuit education, the message was unmistakable.
The true measure of a Jesuit university is not simply the number of students it graduates, but the kind of women and men its alumni become decades later.
In that vision, commencement is not the final chapter of Jesuit education.
It is where lifelong formation truly begins.
