By Amy White
The Texas Catholic
On the tree-shaded grounds of Southern Methodist University, members of the Catholic Campus Ministry at SMU huddled together in a campus minister’s office last fall to consider a topic of paramount importance: helping college students feel at home in the Catholic Church. The university years, they knew, are a time when many Christians drift further from faith. The ministry team hoped to help reverse that trend.
As those gathered tossed around ideas for outreach, one proposal soon rose to the top: a program that would meet SMU students at the intersection of faith and business. This summer, that project proposal earned a 2026 National RISE Award from the Associates of St. John Bosco, and the project itself now dons an alliterative name: “Virtue in Vocation.“
Incentivizing ingenuity
According to ASJB Executive Director Danielle Zuccaro, the mission of the Associates of St. John Bosco is “to help college students to keep their faith,” and the method of choice is creativity in ministry. To that end, ASJB nationally launched the RISE (Renewal through Innovative Student Evangelization) Award competition in the fall of 2025, promising to gift funding — up to $50,000 — to Catholic campus ministries across the U.S. with novel pitches for faith outreach.
“We’re trying to reverse the trends of Catholic college students losing their faith, and so we are doing everything we can to try to encourage these ministries to evangelize well,” Zuccaro explained. “What the RISE Awards do is they incentivize Catholic campus ministries all over the country to execute creative evangelization.”
“The projects,” she emphasized, “had to be creative, outside of the box, original.”
The Catholic Campus Ministry at SMU tossed its hat in the ring with its Virtue in Vocation project proposal, pitching a program that would foster faith among Catholic business students on the Dallas campus.
As the RISE Award competition narrowed from nearly 30 participating Catholic campus ministries to its final five, SMU numbered among the winners, receiving a monetary gift of $3,875 from ASJB — funds to take Virtue in Vocation from a project proposal to a realized program.
‘Virtue in Vocation’
“It’s a three-pronged approach,” Katie Quinn, development officer of Catholic Campus Ministry at SMU, said of Virtue in Vocation. The first prong consists of events featuring speakers from the Dallas-Fort Worth area who are values-guided leaders in their industries. The second prong, perhaps at the heart of the project, is the mentoring program, which is set to match students with mentors who can offer them guidance as they navigate questions of faith and career. The third prong supports the first two, Quinn explained: The campus ministry team will offer a safe space for students to talk about these matters of importance as they juggle the myriad future-facing decisions that fill their college years.
While the Virtue in Vocation program is intended to be a resource for business students, it is not exclusive to that group, Quinn added; any student who has questions about integrating faith and career is welcome to participate.
“A lot of students had spoken to us about uncertainty in how to integrate their faith specifically into very competitive industries,” she shared. “We’re trying to provide that for them and let them know that they don’t have to compartmentalize faith and work, that both can work together.”
‘Strive for success’
Among the students who expressed interest in a program integrating faith and work is Will Zimmer, a junior at SMU who has been involved in Virtue in Vocation from its early planning stage to today, as the project enters a phase of implementation. Zimmer explained that after being initiated into the Catholic Church his freshman year at SMU, he sought to grow deeper in his new faith while simultaneously pursuing excellence as a finance major. He desired a ministry outreach that could speak to both pursuits.
“I think there’s a little bit of a stigma that being a successful businessperson is inherently not Catholic, which I was a little concerned about, because I felt that I wanted to work really hard and feel fulfilled within my career as well as in Catholicism,” Zimmer said, “and I think a lot of other students felt that way as well.”
Zimmer now does much of the legwork for Virtue in Vocation — connecting with speakers, booking rooms, and strategizing about the future of the outreach program — all because he believes in the mission of the project.
“I want this program to help foster students who are uncompromising in both their career and their Catholicism, in the sense that they strive for success in both without losing the other,” he said.
Like Zimmer, Father Kevin Kolker expressed his hope that Virtue in Vocation will show students that faithful Catholicism and professional excellence are not mutually exclusive aims.
“Students here can receive a top-tier business education and make all the connections needed to set out on an incredible career path,” the chaplain and director of Catholic Campus Ministry at SMU said. “Virtue in Vocation will help them see that they don’t have to leave that path to live the life of holiness that Christ is calling them to. Rather, they need to approach their studies and career with a vision inspired by the Gospel: to strive for excellence for the glory of God and to be light to the world!”
Cutline for featured image: Southern Methodist University students are pictured in front of the Catholic center with a certificate from the Associates of St. John Bosco. The Catholic Campus Ministry at SMU received a 2026 National RISE Award from ASJB for its “Virtue in Vocation” project proposal, a program that integrates faith and business on campus. (Courtesy photo)
