After spending more than a decade in Catholic religious education, parish work, and pastoral ministry, Susan Swanke has brought her expertise to the UW-Madison campus.
After most recently working as the adult faith and evangelization coordinator for St. Christopher Parish in Verona and Paoli — part of Divine Mercy Pastorate — where she is also currently a parishioner, Swanke has accepted a position at the Lumen Center, an ecumenical think tank on the UW campus.
The Lumen Center, an initiative of the Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation, has a mission to influence the university “at the level of ideas,” Swanke explained.
The Center is “geared toward the intellectual formation of students and faculty and others who are connected to the university,” she said, adding that its goal is “to bridge the Church and academia”.
In her work, Swanke is deeply invested in the Christian intellectual life, supporting the Center’s research and managing its academic programs.
Hired at the Lumen Center
After being raised Catholic and graduating from UW-La Crosse with degrees in Education and Spanish, Swanke would spend most of the years immediately following graduation in ministry, she said.
Later, she earned a master’s degree in Systematic Theology from Christendom College in Virginia, formalizing her interest in the intellectual tradition of the Church.
While working for various parishes in the Diocese of Madison, one of Swanke’s most impactful roles was organizing and teaching RCIA.
When Go Make Disciples was announced, Swanke developed a “Discipleship Roadmap” for parishioners of St. Christopher Parish, the parish she worked for at the time.
Using the four principles of that roadmap, Swanke then created a small group meeting guide to help further the parish’s evangelical zeal.
It was a little more than a year ago when Swanke was hired at the Lumen Center.
She said, “I had come to some offerings at Upper House in the past.”
Upper House is another ministry of the Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation.
“I don’t remember exactly the first one or how I got on the mailing list, but I would get emails about events, and when they seemed intriguing, I’d sign up and come.”
After attending a few events and learning more about the ecumenical nature of the Lumen Center, Upper House, and the Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation, Swanke learned they were hiring.
At that time, Swanke was looking to expand her horizons, she explained, saying that she wanted to “grow in something new”.
“I applied and ended up not getting that position,” she continued, but fortunately, “they created a new position for me”.
Swanke said that the Foundation was “expecting to hire someone at some point to help with the Lumen Center, in particular.
“When I applied and had the background I did, they thought, ‘I think she’s the right person,’” Swanke said.
When she was hired, Swanke was the first Catholic on staff at the Lumen Center.
The “first” notwithstanding, her time at the Lumen Center “has been really delightful,” she continued, adding that “My colleagues have been really excited to have me as a Catholic.”
When Swanke was considering accepting the role, there was concern that she would have to “set aside” certain projects or aspects of her faith “in order to fit” with her colleagues.
That has not been true, Swanke explained.
Instead, “There’s been a lot of room for me to have all my convictions as a Catholic,” and “There’s no need for me to hold that back,” she said.
What has helped smooth any difficulties is the fact that “We’re united around a particular goal,” and that “There’s so much more benefit to working together,” rather than focusing on ecumenical divisions, she said.
“That’s how I think about this job and this particular goal, which is to influence a secular university,” Swanke said.
Influencing UW-Madison
“There’s a wider and wider divide between the Christian intellectual tradition and modern academic conversations,” Swanke stated.
The Lumen Center, Swanke continued, wants to be “a bridge between those two conversations for the betterment of academia, but also for the betterment of the Church”.
The Center’s goal, and Swanke’s role in that, is to “impact the students who are here, who are Christians, but then, also, we want to impact more upstream: At the level of ideas, we want to impact and influence the university,” she said.
The Lumen Center, Swanke explained, is different than other campus ministries.
She said, “A lot of campus ministries will focus on discipleship formation and spiritual formation, which is a really important component. We have a lot of really good campus ministries here that do that, but our aim is a little bit more geared toward the intellectual formation of students and faculty and others who are connected to the university.”
The Lumen Center, besides conducting Christian research, helps form students through lecture series and public discourse.
Its staff have recently begun the process to offer accredited coursework to UW-Madison students.
A potential class, titled Introducing the Christian Tradition: Ideas, History, and Philosophy, is being developed in collaboration with Saint Paul’s Catholic Student Center, also on the UW-Madison campus.
Swanke is helping make this accredited course a reality in the near future.
Ultimately, Swanke said, “UW-Madison is a big institution, and if we can, in some small way, impact some students and faculty around what it means to be human and what it means to be created by God, I’m all for that.”
For more information on the Lumen Center visit: slbf.org/lumen-center.
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