CTU - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President for Finance and Operations
Job Titles:
- Electronic Resources and Instruction Librarian
Job Titles:
- Systems and Archives Librarian
Job Titles:
- Director of Enrollment Management
Job Titles:
- Manager of Events & Alumni Relations
The CTU Board of Trustees appointed Rev. Paul Bechtold, CP, as the first president of CTU. A gracious man and expert educator, he was the glue that kept the new enterprise on track.
For the third president of CTU, the Board of Trustees turned to Rev. Jack Linnan,CSV, a highly respected member of the Faculty.
With the retirement of Rev. Donald Senior, CP, Rev. Mark Francis, CSV, former CTU faculty member and Superior General of the Viatorians, was elected CTU's fifth president.
After serving 8 years as president, Rev. Senior returned to the faculty and the CTU Board elected as its fifth president, Rev. Norman Bevan, CSSP, a former formation director at CTU and provincial superior of his Spiritan community.
Job Titles:
- Staff Chaplain, Northwestern Medicine
It was March 11, the day that the pandemic was announced by the World Health Organization, when Sharon Dobbs became a full-time chaplain at Northwestern Medicine. After almost 15 years of preparation-as a Minister of Care serving the University of Chicago Hospitals and St. Thomas the Apostle homebound-Sharon Dobbs was ready to be designated an "essential worker."
Like other "spiritual first responders," Sharon re-committed to her chaplain ministry that day, a joint decision made with her husband, despite personal health risks, to continue ministering inside the hospital. Sharon's team was called on to respond to the many challenges of this radically changed environment. Visitors were no longer allowed, and Chaplains moved to supporting patient's families by phone. Volunteers were disbanded including the large group who brought communion from Holy Name, and others who visited patients with music, dogs and reading materials, and assisted patients with the legal healthcare documents. Sharon's "leap of faith" decision was compounded by the heavy atmosphere surrounding downtown Chicago following the civil unrest in the wake of racial injustice across the city with local shops around the hospital boarded up, and her commuting to the center of the city requiring circuitous routes and stops. Sharon ministers daily not only to patients, but also to beleaguered floor staff through resiliency sessions, open daily prayer and listening services, and connecting with the medical units on especially difficult days. Sharon and her team have prioritized maintaining the spiritual wellbeing of nurses, radiologists, lab technicians and other healthcare workers behind the scenes, many of whom are risking their lives to provide care to patients.
In her daily ministry, Sharon recalls a mantra from her studies at CTU: "Always make sure that theology is relevant and in the present." Sharon utilizes spiritual communion prayers adapted by a colleague to make them more relevant in light of the restrictions brought about by COVID-19. Spiritual Communion is a Christian practice of desiring union with Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. It is used in this case by individuals who cannot receive Holy Communion. "Resiliency rounding" is a regular practice for Sharon which includes guided meditation and stretching, in addition to prayer and accompaniment for staff.
While Sharon finds it challenging to suppress the human instinct to use physical touch to console and reverence, she has embraced technology. "The resistance to put a hand on someone's shoulder…just the physical touch of comfort is such a hard thing to back away from."
This could be in part because Sharon was an early adopter of technology in the study of ministry, spending three years in Hong Kong while pursuing CTU's MAPS online degree. She reflected, "I am grateful for all I have studied and learned at CTU that has helped prepare me for this work and allows me to walk the Gospel message."
Drawing further on liturgy classes at CTU, Sharon recalls the practical applications of her training in re-shaping the chapels so they could be properly sanitized, providing disposable prayer rugs, and developing "care pods," portable, individual self-care kits for staff when we had to park our mobile Care Cart due to sanitation concerns. She sees finding the sacred in the mundane as part of her mission. "We can create sacred space wherever we are."
In Professor Michael Andraos' class we read an article published by Professor Roger Schroeder, SVD where I learned that each time you enter a patient's room or a unit, you are entering someone else's garden. You are called to look around, observe what's changed, recognize the need and respect the individual's spiritual circumstances." Whether that is done with an iPad, a telephone, or behind a red line put on the floor to indicate a safe distance, Sharon is committed to this critical work.
Job Titles:
- Hospital Chaplain, Community First Medical Center, St. Francis Hospital and St. Bernard 's Hospital
As the coronavirus claims more and more victims, hospital chaplain Willie Cobb helps the families who are left behind.
Willie Cobb didn't know the coronavirus was coming, but he was prepared for it. The 57-year-old hospital chaplain in Chicago has been helping people grapple with death for a long time.
As a black chaplain in a city that has long had health inequalities that break down along racial lines, Cobb was not surprised that COVID-19 hit the city's black population hard. But even he was shocked to see how many black people were filling the ICU beds and requiring ventilators in the two hospitals where he works. The citywide data is similarly stark - black people account for about 70% of the coronavirus deaths in Chicago but make up only 30% of the population.
Still, Cobb, a married father of three and Catholic, ministers to everyone - across different religions and races. And as COVID-19 has borne down on his city, he has gotten to work.
Four days out of the week, Cobb makes the 10-minute drive from his home to Community First Medical Center on the north side of Chicago in a mostly white and Latino neighborhood. He likes to arrive by 6 a.m.
In the time of COVID-19, his early mornings have shifted from checking in to see what's happened with the patients overnight to seeing which patients have died.
"This is the new normal," he says.
Cobb picks up the phone and calls the families of the dead, to find out what he can do to help - these are the people who will need his support most immediately.
Hospital chaplains typically provide spiritual support, but Cobb says that's just one part of what he does. The way he describes it, his job is to get people through the worst moments of their lives - the moments that are so bleak tomorrow doesn't seem worth living for. Cobb is always asking people what they need. Getting resources to people - whether it's childcare or help with funeral arrangements - is one way to assuage pain.
At 8:30 each morning, he leads a morning prayer over the loudspeaker of the hospital for all of the staff and patients. The prayers come from whatever is in his heart, he says, but most recently he's been praying for the health care workers who are on the front lines. In the past week, he's offered prayers for both Passover and Easter. Round-faced and with a wide smile, Cobb speaks melodically and with patience; the long pauses between his thoughts offer a tinge of dramatic flair.
After the prayer, he checks in with individual staff members, to see how they're doing. He's never seen them all so pushed to their limits. Some of them are scared to death, he says. He watched one woman, on the janitorial staff, nearly faint in distress after she was asked to clean the room of a COVID-19 patient. She was sent to the emergency room and then home after that.
Cobb's days are made up of finding a myriad of ways to give people relief, each tailored to individual patients. One family was having trouble with a funeral home that's too busy to pick up the remains of their loved one who had passed away from COVID-19. Cobb scrolled through his phone and dialed the owner of a crematorium in Chicago that he works with regularly. The man was an hour and a half away, but he came anyway. "That's my guy," says Cobb.
Still, Cobb believes that when deaths arise out of injustice, his challenge is still to help the people who are left behind want to keep living. Forgiveness can be a powerful tool, he says. He cites how the congregation in South Carolina where nine black people were murdered forgave the shooter, Dylann Roof. For others, he tries to heal their anger, says Cobb. He shares his own experiences with racism. He tries to help people see that if they continue to hold onto that anger, if they wear it like a badge of honor, then the injustice will win.