Director,
Spiritual Life
(617) 373-2728
Shelli Jankowski-Smith joined Northeastern in February 2004 as its first full-time director of Spiritual Life. She has a broad experience in campus ministry and spiritual life, after serving for 15 years as director of the Office of the University Chaplain at Boston University.
At BU, Jankowski-Smith helped found the Interfaith Initiative, a campus-wide effort to foster dialogue and shared service among students. She was awarded the university's 2003 Honorary Scarlet Key Award in recognition of highest contribution to the student community.
Jankowski-Smith formerly worked in the Department of Education at the Islamic Society of North America, the umbrella organization for Muslim Student Association campus chapters across the nation.
She holds master's degrees in education from Indiana University and in creative writing from Boston University. Her areas of interest include interfaith dialogue, women's spiritual journeys, poetry and religion, Muslim-Christian relations, and mysticism.
Jankowski-Smith also brings experience of a variety of expressions of spirituality through her work as a published poet as well as a practitioner of yoga, meditation, and Reiki. Originally from Indiana, she lives on Boston's North Shore with her husband and two sons.
In her work at Northeastern, Jankowski-Smith strives to foster a supportive, lively and diverse atmosphere of spiritual life on campus. In its mission to support and nurture the spiritual well-being of those within the university community, the Spiritual Life Office is a place of welcome, connection, refuge, service, growth and joy.
She invites all students, faculty and staff to share the university's beautiful Sacred Space multifaith worship and meditation center, as well as to take advantage of the open-door approach that she, the chaplains and the Spiritual Life Office staff maintain.