Office of Mission and Identity
John Staudenmaier, S.J.
Fr. Staudenmaier has been a faculty member in the University's Department of History since 1981. From 2001 to 2004, he served as interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Education. For even longer than he has been engaged in academic work, Fr. Staudenmaier has been engaged in retreat direction, spiritual direction, and writing and speaking on various topics related to Jesuit and Catholic spirituality, especially its intersection with contemporary culture.
In July 2005, Fr. Staudenmaier was appointed by UDM President Gerard Stockhausen, S.J., to lead the University's newly created Office of Mission and Identity. The Office of Mission and Identity has been developed to strengthen the University's Catholic, Mercy, and Jesuit identity by making resources available to help the University community understand and live out the UDM mission more completely. According to President Stockhausen, the goal of the Office is to see that reflection upon mission and dialogue around mission-related topics becomes part of the ordinary work and decision-making of the University.
The Office works with existing UDM entities to provide initial and on-going orientation programs and education and conversations related to Catholic faith and identity, Jesuit and Mercy traditions, the Catholic intellectual tradition, and Catholic imagination. It also offers opportunities for prayer/reflection, spiritual direction and retreat direction.
Since 1995, Fr. Staudenmaier has served as the editor of Technology and Culture, the international peer-reviewed quarterly publication of the Society for the History of Technology. T&C is published by the Johns Hopkins University Press and co-sponsored by the University of Detroit Mercy, The Henry Ford and the University of Michigan at Dearborn.
Fr. Staudenmaier also lectures nationally and internationally on topics related to the Catholic Church and the history of technology. He has been visiting scholar at Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology and Society and held the Gasson Chair at Boston College. At MIT, he has taught several times in the Science, Technology and Society Program and spent one year as Fellow in The Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. Fr. Staudenmaier wrote Technology's Storytellers: Reweaving the Human Fabric (currently under contract with MIT Press for a second edition) and numerous articles.
For more information on Fr. Staudenmaier, visit his UDM faculty web page.