Giving to DMU · Impact
The difference a gift makes, in their own words.
We searched ten years of DMU's video archive — commencements, webinars, interviews, about 400 recordings — for the moments where generosity shows up on film. Nothing on this page was scripted for it. Every quote links to the recording where the person says it.
The numbers
Every figure here has a source you can watch.
Each figure below was stated by a named member of the DMU community in a recorded session, and links to the moment they said it.
Up to 35%
support through diocese and ministry partnership agreements
Tom Brooks, PsyD program webinar→Scholarships
Four students and alumni, on what funding made possible.
A scholarship decision is a line item for a few weeks. Then it becomes someone's working life. Four examples, in their own words.
Bernadette Mutirende
MS in Psychology alumna · Rwanda → New Jersey
Bernadette came to the program from Rwanda. She now runs a life-coaching practice in West Orange, New Jersey, and credits the two years of study with healing her before it equipped her.
Watch the moment (from 6:52)This program helped me to be a total transformation... the two years helped me really to heal completely... I could write and cry, and it helped me to heal.
Isaiah Lamb
PsyD student · serving in DMU's clinic
Isaiah is a doctoral student seeing clients as a therapist-in-training in the university's clinic. In a program webinar, he was asked how students afford a psychology doctorate. This was his answer.
Watch the moment (from 55:41)Almost everyone here is utilizing student loans for their day to day living... bringing hope to people's lives and bringing healing, I think that's something far beyond what the reward of money could ever give you.
Charice Bennett
MS in Psychology alumna
Charice paid for her degree three ways at once. One of the three was other people's generosity.
Watch the moment (from 40:10)I was a single person doing a master's in psychology. I actually did a third student loan, a third out of pocket, and a third through scholarships.
Kathryn Landa
Spiritual Direction Certificate alumna · Southern California
Kathryn finished the certificate and put it to work at once. She still meets with directees she began seeing as a student, and a retreat center brought her onto its spiritual direction team because, in her words, they were anxious to have more trained people.
Watch the moment (from 9:02)I see several people that I started seeing through the program, still today... I have a practice... and I end up getting referrals from other people as well.
Formation
Stories of transformation.
The archive holds more than 250 segments in which someone describes being changed by this work. Four of them follow.
Dr. Melinda Moore
Newman Lecture · suicide bereavement and post-traumatic growth
Dr. Moore is a suicidologist. In a Newman Lecture on suicide and its aftermath, she speaks for five minutes about losing her husband, and about how that grief, met with faith, redirected her research and her vocation toward the bereaved.
Watch the moment (from 16:46)It was the worst experience of my life. But I also tell people it was the best experience of my life. And that may seem absurd, but I will have to tell you that it really took the blinders off. It changed me on a profound level.
Dr. Gregory Gisla
PsyD alumnus · Director of Emergency Psychiatric Response, Sacramento
Dr. Gisla directs psychiatric emergency response at a major medical center. At the 2021 commencement he described what DMU's formation does in the hardest rooms in medicine.
Watch the moment (from 147:26)I know that the patient before me is a human person, one created inherently good in the image of a God who does not have favorites. Their goodness was not earned and cannot be taken from them.
Debbie Berg
MS in Psychology alumna · mother and advocate
Debbie earned the degree while working as a dietitian. When her daughter Kristen suffered a severe stroke, the capstone research Debbie had done on dignity and personhood became the training she used to hold every caregiver to it.
Watch the moment (from 3:49)My Divine Mercy experience, through my capstone project and a lot of the reading that I did, helped me make sure anyone that worked with Kristen treated her with dignity... My Divine Mercy education fully empowered me to do the right thing by Kristen.
Dr. Philip Scrofani
2024 Faculty Recognition · decades forming DMU's psychologists
Dr. Scrofani told the story of 'Nick,' a severely psychotic patient other clinicians had given up on — and what happened when someone finally looked for the goodness in him.
Watch the moment (from 14:51)When you notice something good about someone, somehow they kind of pick up without a word being said that you saw something in them, and they kind of see it themselves... A relationship was formed. We had made contact.
The need
What the Church is asking for.
Three bishops, from three dioceses, describing the same shortage on camera.
Bishop Earl K. Fernandes
Diocese of Columbus
Bishop Fernandes was asked where he refers people in his diocese who need clinical care consistent with their faith.
Watch the moment (from 9:28)And where do I refer them? I still don't have a good answer in my diocese, and that's why I'm looking to places like Divine Mercy University.
Bishop Keith Chylinski
Auxiliary Bishop of Philadelphia · MS in Psychology alumnus
Bishop Chylinski holds an MS in Psychology from DMU. He was rector of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary before his episcopal appointment.
Watch the moment (from 9:11)DMU is truly an act of God in the world. The church needs you. The church needs qualified, faith-filled mental health clinicians as part of her saving mission to bring health and healing into the world.
Bishop Michael Burbidge
Diocese of Arlington
Bishop Burbidge described the shortage his diocese faces in its own schools, where student mental health needs have grown since COVID.
Watch the moment (from 8:25)Our schools — we don't have enough school counselors. And of course, in our Catholic schools, we want those who are Catholic school counselors.
Where they end up
The people on this page don't stay on campus. From the same archive, we mapped where 91 students and alumni serve — clinics, parishes, dioceses, campuses, and the military, from Rwanda to Rhode Island.
See where our graduates serveGiving
Most benefactors never see what a gift becomes.
This page is our attempt to show you. Scholarship decisions for the coming year are funded now, before the students arrive.