Deans and senior leaders representing more than two dozen institutions in the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities’ business schools gathered at Dr. E. J. and Margaret O’Brien Hall for the 2025 AJCU Business Deans Conference. The two-day conference was a chance for the leaders to discuss the challenges and opportunities their institutions face.
“Today’s business world needs Jesuit-educated professionals more than ever before,” said Andrew DeGuire, Keyes Dean of Business Administration at Marquette University. “Organizations are asking for new talent who can think holistically, act ethically and achieve results with teams across varying cultures, expertise and perspectives. Jesuit colleges and universities are constructed to form exactly these types of professionals.”
The conference touched on core college priorities such as accreditation, enrollment trends and AI disruption. Attendees report engaging in productive, strategic conversation about how to put their colleges in the best possible position to succeed.
“It was one of the best professional conferences I ever went to,” said Dr. Michael Behnam, dean of the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago. “It was fantastically organized, insightful and super fun.”
“It is our job to discern how to best align our people, technology and processes to offer high-quality Catholic, Jesuit education to as many learners as possible, and I feel like we made a lot of positive strides toward that goal,” said Dr. Anthony Pennington-Cross, executive associate dean of Marquette Business.
This conference is held each year on-site at one of the AJCU’s member institutions. Marquette also hosted a similar AJCU conference for information technology managers at O’Brien Hall in May.
The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) is a national organization that represents Jesuit higher education among its various constituencies, provides a forum for the exchange of information and experiences in Jesuit higher education, and encourages and facilitates collaborative initiatives among its member institutions. Those initiatives include fostering Jesuit, Catholic identity and mission, educating for a faith that does justice, supporting national, international and online collaborations between campuses, and sponsoring professional and leadership development programs.
