A new initiative at Marquette University in Milwaukee promises to support Catholic leaders in local parishes and schools — and its director hopes that it will inspire similar collaborations elsewhere.
“I’m hoping that this can help other Catholic universities in their archdioceses or dioceses think about how Catholic higher education can partner with the local Church to really build up the body of Christ, and do it in a really serious and important way,” Dan Scholz, director of Marquette’s Catholic Schools and Parishes Initiative, told Our Sunday Visitor.
A professional development program in partnership with the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, the initiative will provide ongoing education for lay leaders, including one-year certificates, workshops, seminars and conferences. The new project focuses on five key areas of need: Catholic identity, Catholic school leadership, Catholic school effectiveness, Catholic school and parish governance, and parish lay leadership.
Speaking with Our Sunday Visitor, Scholz highlighted programs that would help teachers serve students with special needs, offer principals networking opportunities and a support system, and assist schools with strategic planning, among other things.
Scholz, a Marquette alumnus, returned to the Jesuit university to lead the initiative, which launched in fall 2024. He brings with him nearly 40 years of experience in Catholic education, 20 of them spent at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, where he served in many roles, including as president.
His latest endeavor seeks to fill a gap left when Cardinal Stritch University and its St. Clare Center closed in 2023. The center, which Scholz once led, supported the development of lay leaders and offered everything from annual religious education certification to bilingual programming.
“When Strich closed, suddenly all of that was gone,” Scholz said.
Serving children with special needs
This new initiative, Scholz said, comes after 18 months of planning, including discussions about where to focus energy, how to identify needs and how to make the biggest impact. They are currently testing programming and ensuring that the initiative is offering what pastors, principals and teachers need and want.
“I don’t want it to be something that I just dreamed up,” he said. “It’s got to be something that the leaders, both lay and ordained, in our churches and schools, are saying, ‘We need help with this.'”
He added: “It’s a matter of how do we do it well, how do we roll it out in a way that’s manageable — that doesn’t get ahead of us — how do we raise money for all of this.”
The Catholic Schools and Parishes Initiative will also respond to needs identified by the superintendent and associate superintendents that oversee Catholic schools in Milwaukee, Scholz said. He counted 103 total high schools and grade schools in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
“A really important [need] is special education,” he said. “A lot of Catholic schools simply don’t have the infrastructure to provide special education for kids with exceptional needs.”
Principals and teachers in Milwaukee Catholic schools are asking for support to accommodate children with special needs so that these children can attend the same schools as their siblings, he said.
Some archdiocesan schools already do this, he added, but the archdiocese wants to scale up their efforts by approaching schools that want special education curriculum and teachers who have expressed interest in getting the extra training required to serve these children.
Marquette University has the resources to help: The university developed a special education licensure that is approved by Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction, he said.
“It’s a huge need,” Scholz said. “Catholic education rightly talks about being open to serve everybody.”
Religious education for teachers
The initiative anticipates helping hundreds of teachers in the archdiocese. Scholz shared another plan to enroll all first- and second-year teachers in a two-year religious education certification program.
“Because a lot of these teachers don’t have a lot of background in this. Some of them aren’t Catholic; some of them, sadly, are fallen-away Catholics,” he said. “So to sort of bring them back into the Faith, in some cases introduce the Faith to them, form them, help them understand what it means, for example, that being a teacher in a Catholic school is a vocation, it’s a calling.”
Speaking about his own role, Scholz called returning to Marquette a “happy story.”
“It feels like my ongoing call,” he said. “Like the Lord has placed me in this situation right now, because it’s part of where I have felt the Spirit strongly my entire career — and now I can draw [from] an awful lot of resources and relationships and experience to hopefully make an impact before I retire.”
Looking to the future, he said that one of his aspirations is to deliver some of the initiative’s programming to the other dioceses.
“Figure out how to scale it that way and then look, can we do it across states? Can we do it in the Midwest?” he asked. “That’s an interest of mine.”
He hoped that the initiative transforms every leader who participates in it.
“I am hopeful that the biggest impact it makes on people is a closer relationship with Jesus and a deeper understanding of not only their relationship with Jesus, but how they help build up the kingdom of God through the Church and through our schools,” he said. “And to give them a sense that their piece in all of this … is part of a bigger plan that God is orchestrating and calling us to do.”
