Two longtime Creighton Jesuits moving to St. Camillus in Milwaukee
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Two longtime Creighton Jesuits – the Rev. Don Doll, SJ (pictured above left), professor emeritus of journalism, and the Rev. Andy Alexander, SJ, (pictured above right) director of the Collaborative Ministry Office and Online Ministries – will be moving to the St. Camillus Jesuit Community in Milwaukee in May.
“There are few who have extended Creighton’s reach on such a global scale as these two Jesuits,” said Creighton President the Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ, PhD. “Through Fr. Doll’s international renown as a photojournalist and Fr. Alexander’s work with Online Ministries, they have not only served others but found a calling as artists and innovators in their own right. They have been an inspiration to so many, and we are grateful for their outstanding contributions to our university and the world.”
Fr. Doll
Fr. Doll arrived at Creighton in 1969, beginning a career at the University that would take him across the world as an award-winning, internationally acclaimed photojournalist and see him teach generations of students who hoped to follow in his footsteps.
Fr. Doll said his introduction to Creighton came a few years before, through Joe Egan, SJ, director of Campus Ministry in the mid-1960s. “He invited Dick Hauser, Michael Morrison, me and a few other Jesuits to lead more than 22 retreats over a three-year period,” Fr. Doll said. “The deal was done with my immersion into Creighton when Lee Lubbers, SJ, head of the art department, invited me to teach photojournalism and art photography.”
From darkroom to digital, Fr. Doll served in both the fine arts and journalism departments during his 54 years on campus. He taught film and digital photography, videography, and layout and design. Through his leadership, the Hitchcock Journalism Lab was transformed into a computerized design lab with a grant from the Hitchcock Foundation in 1989.
The Rev. Don Doll, SJ, meeting with students in the Jesuit Gardens in 2019.
With faith and shared humanity as his lens, Fr. Doll is known to capture the essence of a person, whether in their environment or in a portrait. However, what truly sets Fr. Doll apart are the lasting relationships he builds with his peers, his students and the people he photographs.
His work has focused on marginalized people worldwide, but especially Native Americans in the U.S., including the Lakota, Athabascan and Yupik. National Geographic magazine ran stories featuring Fr. Doll’s images of the Yupik and Athabascan people — “Hunters of the Bering Sea,” June 1984, and “The Athabascans Along the Yukon,” February 1990.
He has published three books featuring his work: Crying for A Vision and Vision Quest: Men, Women and Sacred Sites of the Sioux Nation focused on his work with Native Americans; Call to Vision: A Jesuit’s Perspective on the World covers 50 years of Fr. Doll’s work, detailing his call to photography as a priest, his early work with the Lakota in Rosebud, South Dakota, a series on hospice and more recent images of Jesuits at work across the globe. His images also appear in eight Day in the Life books, and through his MAGISPRODUCTIONS.org, he captured and produced documentary footage of Jesuits battling injustice globally.
Fr. Alexander
Fr. Alexander joined Creighton in 1996 and served in various roles, including vice president of University Ministry and director of the Collaborative Ministry Office. In those roles, he co-created Online Ministries, a website accessed by millions of people across the globe annually and which he describes as “an incredible experience of the grace of this medium for ministry.”
Creighton’s Online Ministries was among the first such ministry on the internet, launching in 1998 with “Daily Reflections,” written reflections about daily Scripture readings created by and for faculty and staff. Daily Reflections has remained a consistently popular feature for 26 years. Another popular feature of the site is the Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer.
Maureen McCann Waldron, BA’75, MA’98, left, and the Rev. Andy Alexander, SJ.
When Fr. Alexander and his co-creator Maureen McCann Waldren, BA’75, MA’98, (retired) discovered that the reflections were reaching an audience far beyond Creighton’s boundaries and, in fact, a worldwide audience, they saw the opportunity to bring Ignatian spirituality, prayer and discernment to people wherever they were. This led to the development of what is believed to be the first online version of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, set up for weekly practice over 34 weeks.
Over the years, Fr. Alexander and Waldren added the Stations of the Cross, “Praying Lent,” “Praying Advent,” “Celebrating Christmas,” “Celebrating Easter” and “Praying Ordinary Time,” in addition to offering special prayers for fathers and mothers. At one point, the production office for the CBS television series “Blue Bloods,” the story of a typical Irish Catholic family with members working throughout the justice system of New York, contacted the office for permission to use one of the online prayers for a Mother’s Day episode.
In addition to his online work, Fr. Alexander has published two books on praying through Loyola Press. He also served weekends at St. Robert Bellarmine Parish in Omaha.
