Retreats

New Student Retreat is a Seattle U tradition offered in fall quarter as a way for first-year and transfer undergraduate students to build community, reflect on their hopes for their journey at SU, and have fun! On New Student Retreat, you'll have the chance to get off campus for a weekend in a beautiful location, hear talks from student leaders about their own SU experience, reflect on your journey to and at SU, and create community with other first-years through a mix of fun and reflection. We hope to see you there! 

Through silence and meaningful reflection, retreatants are invited to discover the generative love in their lives, listen deeply to the core of who they are, and respond to the holy call to act with compassion, courage, and hope in this world. 

The retreat takes place at the Palisades Retreat Center, a beautiful setting overlooking the Puget Sound. Students will have their own private room and bathroom, as well as access to the scenic natural surroundings, a labyrinth, a library, and other contemplative spaces and resources in and around the retreat center. During the retreat, students are exposed to diverse forms of prayer, practical discernment techniques, and other elements of Ignatian Spirituality to support their spiritual life. 

Over four days and three nights, this retreat includes: 

• A waterside environment of silence, prayer, contemplation, and rest 
• Thematic presentations based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius 
• Daily personal conversations with a spiritual companion (one of the retreat directors) 
• Daily communal prayer experiences and Mass 
• Led by professional ministers from Campus Ministry and campus partners, skilled in accompanying all traditions and identities 

ADDITIONAL SILENT / IGNATIAN RETREAT OPPORTUNITIES 

Click on the links below to learn about other retreat opportunities in and around Seattle: 

Grunewald Guild 

Ignatian Spirituality Center 

Palisades Retreat Center 

Peace and Spirituality Center 

Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life  

St. Placid Priory 

The Search Retreat gives students the opportunity to reflect on themselves and their sense of the sacred in the context of community. Though the retreat's roots are in the Jesuit Christian tradition, students of all faith and non-faith backgrounds are welcome to attend and encouraged to show up as they are to explore how love, the sacred, and our relationships shape us and the world we live in. 

New Student Retreat is excellent leadership opportunity for both first-time and experienced leaders. Open to all SU students regardless of whether they have attended one of these retreats, Fall Retreat Leader applications launch both in Spring of the year prior and early Fall quarter of the retreat year. It is a great opportunity to build community with fellow retreat leaders, gain small group facilitation skills, and welcome new students to Seattle University.  

Leadership opportunities within the Search Retreat program are available to alumni of SU's Search Retreat, as well as to students who attended a similar retreat in high school (e.g., Kairos, Encounter, Search) and who have completed their first year at SU. 

The Search Retreat offers various ways for leaders, called Search Workers, to help create the Search experience for their peers. Search is offered in spring quarter, and applications for leadership are released during winter quarter.   

This retreat is a time for students who have been historically excluded by dominant systems due to their racial or ethnic identity to just be. We will travel off campus to be in community, have fun, reflect, and build potential lifelong connections. For more information and to register, check out Campus Ministry’s ConnectSU page. If you have more questions please reach out to the Campus Minister for Religious Diversity, Alex Booker (abooker@seattleu.edu) and he can assist you.

Embodying the Sacred is a retreat open to undergraduate students who identify as non-binary, Two-Spirit, transgender, genderqueer, or cisgender women. This retreat is spacious and centers around making space to ground down in the joy and strengths of our identities, find rest, cultivate community, and have fun. This retreat generally takes place in winter quarter. For more information, please contact Stevi Hamill at hamillstevi@seattleu.edu.