I think the university has grown and developed over these twenty years, from just an idea, from the great courage and and faith of the founders, doctor Sweeney, and those who started with her, doctor Nordling, doctor Vitz, who really stepped out in faith, and followed the Lord's call.
And it's really beautiful, to consider what what's what's happened over the last twenty years based on on that that great act of faith that they they took to move forward.
Someone was telling me recently that, you know, had had had Gladys not, known that this was impossible, it wouldn't that that's one of the reasons why it happened.
Right?
Because she knew building a new institution in higher education is is is difficult.
There are many, things you need to do organizationally, to build an infrastructure, to have a campus, any number of things.
It's it's not an easy project.
It's been really over the years, we've seen the fruits of the faith of the founders who stepped out, but also God's providence every step of the way.
The idea of integrating psychology, the science of psychology with, the faith wasn't even in my radar before ever.
I was a Catholic, and I did follow the Catholic.
But and then I practice psychology, but the putting the two together wasn't even in my radar.
But the only difference was that before I was practicing in a secular setting, even in my practice because, the integration wasn't even in my radar as I said before.
But I began to work with Catholic patients and for the first time begin to be able to refer them to priests for their spiritual needs.
But also, I could see that the patients got better sooner, and maybe their suffering didn't go away, but they coped better with them.
So I thought God is in a hurry, because my idea, it takes, you know, two, three years to be able to get license to pro to give credits.
That was shortened to one week because doctor Nolan was able to say, you know, my entity.
And that's how the postgraduate institute started, the Catholic Institute for the Psychological Sciences.
And we two or three years we gave credits to already licensed psychologists on the integration of faith and science in different areas, virtue and forgiveness, and this and that.
You know, back at the or the very original campus that we had when we were first starting out, we had very humble beginnings.
Our library was in about a 10 foot by 12 foot room and really consisted primarily of volumes that were donated by the original faculty members.
And it grew, but it never had the kind of space that was really inviting, for students to to be able to stay on campus and to study and to, really feel that this was a place where they could spend the whole day.
And so we're excited, about our current library that that really is a really a research library and a place that has certainly all of the room for all of the resources that, we need for the students.
And another thing about the current library is that it's moved increasingly to online resources and so it's, accessible to people who are enrolled both in our online programs as well as on campus students, and so that's a real benefit.
Faculty members really loved each other, but sometimes they would cut up a little.
I remember one time, Doctor.
Frank Moncher put the masking tape and changed it in the office, and he split the office, but he split it such that the entryway was on his side of the office.
And so, jokingly, as a play therapist will be, I would have to run and jump through the door to land on my side of the office.
So, and we had a lot of fun, you know, there were times where we only had one it was cold and we had one space heater and and we would have to share it and people would say, Hey, can I have some heat?
And, we'd have to, you know, take the one space heater and go over.
These are all the growing pains of a brand new institution that's small and starting from scratch, And I tell you, as someone who's been here since the very beginning, it's, it's, I'm in awe of where the, where God has brought Divine Mercy University and the resources and the people he's brought to us to help us to develop into a campus like we have today.
So around, 1997, I was meeting with Gladys Sweeney, and I had mentioned the terrible experience I had in, counseling when I was, in college.
So Gladys Sweeney had told me that she was putting together something different which was going to be a postdoctoral seminar for psychologists to help psychologists deal with people who were coming from a faith perspective.
And that was the original concept of what Gladys wanted to start, which later became the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, which later became Divine Mercy University.
So in that same time period, 1997, 1998, I was part of a very successful company.
I was really starting to understand how business worked and how businesses could flourish and prosper.
So Gladys invited me to be part of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences board as the guy that understood something about business and could be somewhat influential from a business standpoint.
So I wasn't the academic, I wasn't the genius, but I was someone who knew the need for psychological training that would respect someone's faith life at the same time.
And that's what they were building at Institute for the Psychological Sciences and I wanted to be a part of that because it was tough for me early in life to go through this experience of needing help, needing a counselor, not being able to find someone who would respect my Catholic faith and help me flourish as a person.
The early days it was IPS, the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, and of course I had been involved in in the beginning of it, but I was still a professor at NYU so I would come down here and we'd have meetings and so forth.
But then I decided I should come down here full time.
Even though I would be compute commuting I would be full time.
So I had to I had to resign from NYU.
I can't be full time two places at the same time.
So of course NYU, New York University is a big research university it's in New York City it has a rather large downtown campus and lots of buildings thousands of students it's been around for a long time you know since maybe almost two hundred years now, not quite.
And so that was a big change because I come down here and the first classes that we had were we we rented a couple of rooms at the the Roslyn Marriott, the Key Bridge Marriott.
And so on one Saturday I I think I gave the first class there and talk about you know just it's not a big university it's just a small institute and we're just getting started and who knows where it's going but and some people thought I was crazy to give up a a professorship, full professorship and tenure at NYU But somehow or other, I knew I was supposed to be here.
I was looking forward to it very much, and I didn't experience it much as a as a risk or I just knew this what I really wanted to do and I jumped at it.
So it was wonderful.
In Our Lady of Guadalupe, we have our first mass at the chapel at the institute, and we have the opening, and then the side visit, and the lady comes in and said, I don't believe this integration.
I don't you know, I can't promise you anything.
I know you had exceptions about the the doctoral program.
I'm not even sure about the master program because I've got to see about this.
I've never seen this done before.
And she was really hostile and, just not a team player as the other ones.
So they were spending three days at the institute, not with us, but with the students sitting in classes talking to professors, looking at all the paperwork, doing talking to librarians, doing all sorts of things.
And then at the end, we had an exit interview, and the champagne was cooling in the bathroom.
And we had some idea that it was gonna be good, but we didn't really know.
And so we walked into the classroom, and she gave us feedback.
She took the initiative to start and she said, I came here with trepidation.
I never seen this done before.
But after talking to your student, the student sold her and she told us that.
After talking to your students, after seeing the passion that they have for for the program, and after talking to your professors, not only do you get license to be a master, but you get license to have the doctoral program pending, of course, as I visit the doctoral program later on.
And, he said, she said, and when you when you are in the Taj Mahal, I wanna be able to say, 'I knew them when they were this little.' And that was beautiful.
I mean, it was it was very moving for all of us, but the students especially, because they are the one that owned the program.
They were the one that were taking this integration to the world.
So when we communicated the news, they were all in the bathroom, you know, with the champagne, they all came and celebrated.
That was beautiful.
So that was our idea of Guadalupe guide and all of this and and and making all of this happen.
So then we had to apply for Southern Association of for SACS for accreditation.
And that was another big effort because it wasn't big enough to to be licensed to open, but it was even more effort to to apply to be accredited as accredited institution by SACS.
And we had to go that route in order to to keep growing.
So we increased the number of faculty.
We increased, the number of students.
We changed the program from one year to two years for the master's.
We realized we needed more time, and, and then and then we just applied for for Southern Association of, you know, for for SACS accreditation.
And that was a lot of work.
I mean, hours, countless hours by, by our professor.
Doctor.
Nordling has done a tremendous amount of hidden work.
I mean, really, and he deserves a tremendous amount of credit, and Doctor.
Muncher, just everybody in the faculty and the staff, everybody participate.
Nancy Flynn, I mean, just working.
She did everything.
She was registered.
She was received.
She was every all the different hats at the institute.
And and because of that, it was a great advantage that she knew each area specifically so she could really help out with the accreditation.
To be an accredited institution, there are several components that have to be in place.
We have to have a board that's responsible for the institution and exercising physical responsibility as well as oversight for all the entire institution.
We're evaluated in terms of our mission as how well we meet our standards.
So the programs that we offer, our faculty and their credentials, as well as the most important piece, the student and their achievement, are critical to remaining an accredited institution.
When the institution decided it wanted to offer graduate degrees, they had to be authorized by the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia.
We received authorization from SHEV and as a condition of that, to operate in Virginia, we had to seek, regional accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
In 2005, we were accredited as a member institution with SACS.
That accreditation, again, focused on our mission and how well we met the standards for the accrediting agency.
Five years later as a new institution, you're reaffirmed.
And in 2010, we went through that process.
In 2016, we were accredited by the American Psychological Association for our doctoral program in clinical psychology.
I remember the day that we got it.
I was sitting in class teaching advanced psychotherapy, Middle of the seminar, about nine students in the class, and I think it was Jen Carnes comes in.
She knocks on the door very gently, and she passes me a note.
I open the note, and it says, you cannot mention this to the students until father Charles makes the official announcement, but you just received the letter saying you're APA accredited.
Well, I wanted to, like, get up and start chatting, but the note said I couldn't do anything.
And it was just a this is not typical of me.
I just I'm looking at that and I'm trying to suppress this emotion, and it's a little embarrassing to talk about.
And then I just leaned over and started crying.
I remember just crying and sobbing.
You know, after that four years of exhaustion, I just start crying and the students were saying, what's the matter?
Can we help you?
Did something was it bad news?
Was it bad news?
And I said, no.
It was very good news.
Well, of course, as soon as I said that, they all started cheering.
So I gave everything away, you know.
But it was a great moment.
I'll never forget that moment because you're trying to suppress a feeling and it won't come out, so you break down, you know.
But that was something that we worked really hard to do, you know.
Well, the move from our old campus to our new campus has been just such a blessing, And there are really two different ways it's been a blessing.
First, it's in terms of functionality, and the second is in terms of building community.
In terms of the functionality, we now have really adequate classroom space for the future, And the classrooms are both comfortable, spacious, and really developed with the latest technologies, and that really aids us in our ability to train our students in the kind of state of the art practice of clinical psychology.
In addition, one of the best things that's happened to us as a campus is to be able to develop our clinic from the ground up.
And by the ground up, I mean we've been able to put in a large number of clinical offices where we can see clients, both individual clients and couples and families and groups, and we even have a special playroom for working with young children.
And the students are really happy because they now have space for being able to write up their clinical notes, to write up their reports, and to be able to meet with their the clinic staff to do supervision.
So we were very excited to open the IPS, clinic on the, 1st Floor of this this building.
The clinic is beneficial, I think, not just to our students in terms of sharpening their skills in psychotherapy and really putting into practice what they have learned in the classroom, but also we hope that it will really benefit the community.
Because the clinic is low fee, we don't turn anyone away who cannot afford services.
We really aim to be a resource for the local community, for those who may be underprivileged, or under resourced in other ways.
And, we really hope that our presence here will have a very positive impact on not only individual people, but also on families and the entire community.
I feel very blessed to be at Divine Mercy University.
And as I've told a number of people, coming to DMU was really like coming home.
It was coming home in the sense of having my faith be an active part of my professional work.
It was coming home in the sense of pulling together just a lot of readings that I have done on philosophy and theology and integrating all of that with the work of psychology and counseling and feel very privileged, honored to have been co director of the PsyD program when I came in 2014.
And then having the board and president talk to me about launching a brand new school of counseling program in clinical mental health counseling online.
And as they say, the proof of the pudding is in our graduates.
And so out of our 12 graduates from May 2019, 11 of the 12 are working in the clinical mental health counseling field.
And in diverse settings from a seminary, to a large public mental health system, to a small private Catholic Christian clinic.
And the other one that we should have anticipated, but have been pleasantly surprised by is we started off with just about 20 students in our very first cohort, and we're currently up to about 185 active students.
And so the growth of the program, has been, both a pleasant surprise and a challenge that keeps all of us working, for our mission and purpose here at Divine Mercy University.
So we've talked about this design process that we've gone through and how exciting that's been to bring all those things together.
And it's interesting, we we bring those principles with us into every course that we build.
Every course.
We've developed this language of the four foundation stones.
And so I'm just gonna, let's talk briefly about this.
The four foundation stones, the first one is that professional counselor identity, that professional counselor education.
The second one is what's called backwards design.
The third one is authentic learning and assessment.
The fourth one is this Catholic Christian meta model of the person, this vision of the person that informs everything else.
Very effective, very intentional way of building courses.
Yes.
I came to DMU at the time, IPS, in 2011 as a master's in clinical psychology student.
I started here and finished my master's program in about three years, really following a call that I had to really pursue the the area of psychology to really understand more of who people are, what they're made of, in order that I can help them with the skills and the tools that they need, for walking through their healing, especially in in mental illness, and the sufferings that they encounter.
So I started here in 2011, and I've been here ever since.
As an alumni of DMU, I'm now a licensed professional counselor.
So I I work in the clinical capacity mostly and that's really one of the pieces that drew me to this program is the clinical formation, the training, and the intensity of the education to really form me as a professional clinician.
So now I work in that capacity at a at a private clinic, and I'm able to see clients, see do psychotherapy, see and work with groups of different kinds, and give give talks and advocacy work and presentations as well.
So it's been a joy of mine to to really invest myself professionally in in that area.
All stemming from my education here, my degree, and really early on the the training information that the the faculty provided really set the foundation for me to be able to to really invest in a career, that way.
So as a as a clinician, one of the things that we encounter most in the clinical work that we do is encountering trauma.
Everyone experiences trauma of all kinds, and I really felt a need to receive additional training and expertise in that particular area.
Throughout my internship and throughout the work that I've done early on clinically, that area has been really important to me to focus on.
So I got involved with the Center for Trauma and Resiliency Studies pretty pretty early on and went through all of the trainings, with a team and had had the blessing of going on, our second immersion trip to Kenya last summer.
So as a faculty member for that trip, I was able to really utilize the training in our advocacy work and the presentations that we've done, the group work that we were able to do with the different communities, in in the area of Kenya, which is a very valuable experience in a lot of ways.
One, it stretches you professionally and, personally, but also just to see the work that we do, the the trainings that we do, apply them in real life scenarios.
The Centre for Trauma and Resiliency Studies adds value to the community and to the university in a number of ways.
First to the community, we, offer training to first responders and to area clinicians in aspects of trauma.
We're also open to the public, so pastors join us, teachers join us, youth group leaders join us, to learn how to take care of others during crisis and during, a disaster.
We also have the ability to respond to crisis and disaster locally in the community and to deploy teams to be able to provide mental health services to both first responders and to survivors.
We respond to, to to trauma, not just in the local community, but statewide and throughout The United States.
We have the availabilities of therapists regarding trauma.
So people can come to us, we can refer to local therapists that have graduated our program.
For the university, certainly training students in trauma informed care and to receive, certifications regarding, aspects of trauma.
So compassion fatigue, field trauma, hopefully leading to certification as a clinical traumatologist.
The students that are trained and have certification and skill are also very easily hired once they've graduated.
All of our graduates have found work very, very quickly because the marketplace is looking for skilled traumatologists.
Also, we've been able to add, pieces of our training to certain coursework, particularly in the masters of clinical mental health program.
And we're able to, take parts of our training and actually insert it as assignments in the curriculum.
The Department of Integrative Studies grew out of, if you will, the very desire to integrate faith and reason across all of its programs.
It recognized that, a service was necessary, manned and staffed with people who are competent, competent in philosophy and theology, in dialogue with psychology and mental health practice.
That's a tall order.
It's a lot to ask.
And the department has been growing since its inception, and now it's, actually fivefold in size.
So the lifeblood of the Department of Integrative Studies is what we call the Catholic Christian metamodel, the person.
The metamodel is a big framework.
It is a large understanding of the philosophical and theological tradition coupled with psychology in order to give us the the richest understanding of the person in order to use it effectively in our schools of counseling and psychology.
The meta model serves as just that, a framework, a model of models to help us to, see how best to understand the person, first of all.
Secondly, how that client, in the particular person can be served.
Thirdly, how the profession of psychology and counseling can also benefit from a larger vision of the person.
And how the Christian counselor and psychologist can be supported in their identity as healers.
Another important part of the Department of Integrative Studies has been, since the beginning, the Newman Lecture Series.
The Newman Lectures have been, if you will, at the cutting edge of the Catholic intelligentsia of The United States.
The the department, but basically the university has been able to attract key people to help us understand more deeply what the human person is and how the human person flourishes in their life from day to day.
What we have, in terms of the Newman lecture series has been a great number of psychologists and psychiatrists coming to speak about the person, the family, suffering and meaning.
But then also there have been others, and each year there is a collection, including philosophers and theologians, lawyers, historians, even architects, and all of them on the whole notion of of how the person in the family can benefit, from a deep understanding of the person.
What I'd like to just, do is mention a number of the names, and they've been a a good number of names over the last twenty years.
Edwin Pellegrino, famous famous doctor, Sir Roger Scruton, Leon Kass, Michael Novak, just a few of the names of of individuals who are, if you will, a part of the intellectual tradition of the university through the Newman Lecture Series.
The spiritual direction certificate program is an exciting program on Divine Mercy University.
This program integrates the tradition of the church, of course, rooted in sacred scripture through the fathers of the church, the desert fathers and mothers, together with the doctors of the church, the greats, the Saint John's of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila's, together with modern authors.
So it integrates and it weaves together the best of tradition together with the most recent of science and what's relevant of science.
The program involves not only learning online, but it involves some on-site residencies where students' skills are honed and they're critiqued and they're helped to grow.
This program is an exciting program, and which really brings together so many of the great traditions, both of the Catholic Church, of Christian tradition, and well too of what Divine Mercy University has developed in these years.
We launched our capital campaign in, the beginning of two thousand eighteen.
We officially launched then, and, the first priority was to purchase a new building, which we have done.
It was a two and a half million dollar price tag, and thankfully, we were able to raise that money.
And then we had to renovate the building, and that was about a $3,000,000 project.
We've raised the money for that too.
And the next big, challenge for us is to build a new chapel.
That will be about, we estimate, 1,500,000.
We've received a first leadership gift for that, and, we are expecting to, to to be able to build that, in the not too distant future.
It's going to be a great, project.
It will be in the center of the building and so the Tabernacle, our Lord, will be centered in the middle of the building and so he'll be the heart of the university.
He already is the heart of the university and also geographically he'll be the center of the building.
The chapel being the building is a is a rectangle with an atrium and the and the chapel will be in the atrium.
So it's gonna be an extraordinary project and, people will be able to make visits, different parts of the building be able to look into the chapel from windows on the 1st, 2nd, And 3rd Floor.
And, so we're excited about that.
And then we also have to raise scholarship money.
It's very important that we raise scholarship money.
This year, we hope to have $1,600,000 in scholarship money available for students.
There are a lot of students who'd like to study with us, but they need financial assistance, so it's important for us to raise that money.
And scholarship money is coming in.
That will be a continuing, project for us in the years to come.
That's just not a a one time deal.
So every year we'll have to raise scholarship money, and Lord willing, it'll be more and more every year.
Sometimes people ask me about, well how did you come up with the name Divine Mercy, right?
So when we expanded, to the school of counseling counseling back in 2016, there was a need to, to show that we weren't just a psychological program.
They're two different they're closely related fields, but they're two different fields.
And within the field of counseling, it might have been a little awkward to have a school called Institute for Psychological Sciences with the counseling program.
So we didn't wanna lose the IPS name, so that's the name for our school of psychology.
And we thought for the school of counseling, we put them both under an umbrella of something that really communicated what we're all about, what our mission is all about.
And so the name Divine Mercy University was chosen because it communicates our first our Catholic identity, which is extremely important to the school that we're in step with, with the church.
But also, our mission is one of mercy.
It's it's helping to form individuals who can be instruments of God's mercy, reaching out to those who are suffering and suffering many times in in ways that aren't even perceived by others.
Suff those suffering with depression, those suffering from trauma, those suffering from abandonment, loneliness, grief.
We can go down the list.
So many different, some more complex mental health disorders and really have a heart for that.
Right?
We wanna have great students.
We wanna have the best science, but we wanna also be reminded that if we don't have compassionate and merciful hearts, if we're not forming our students to be compassionate and merciful therapists, then we're really not fulfilling our mission.
And likewise, if we're not from the administration of faculty, if we're not communicating that, if we're not creating an atmosphere that fosters that, then we're really not doing our job.
So it's a reminder the name is a reminder to us, of what we're called to be.
Finally, our logo, we put in there, Fides Ratzio Axio.
Right?
Faith, reason, action.
And that's also very important to what we wanna do, I think, both from a, from an intellectual level, but also from a practical level.
The intellectual level, we combine science, we combine theology and philosophy into our work, into our curriculum.
So we have that faith and and reason, but it can't stop there.
It needs to be put into practice.
And the field of mental health is a great way to do that.
To to take insights about the human person, insights on human nature, and blend that and use that in a very practical way to serve the world, to serve our culture today.
So that's faith, reason, and action.
So in summary, I would say our goals are first, we wanna build our scholarship funding so we can help our current students graduate with maybe less levels of student debt and then open up the opportunity to study at DMU to many, many more, who are interested and qualified.
We'd also like to have our chapel, which would be the centerpiece of our campus, the heart of who we are and the heart of everyone who comes here.
And then finally, we would like to see different areas of as God leads us to, expand and, touch other areas of human life of of, of work and so forth that that psychology plays an important role in.
So those are our goals.
And with our lord's help, we can make it a reality.