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When Sebastian Torres was about to enter high school, his parents gave him a choice. For seven years, he, his younger sister and his parents had lived in the Amazonian region of Colombia because of his father’s work with the country’s education department. His parents wanted him to have the best high school education possible, so they offered him the chance to move back home to Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, with a population of about 2.4 million people. The other option, they told him, was for all of them to move to the United States, joining family living outside Chicago.
“In Colombia, to just say, ‘America,’ that’s like, oh my gosh, something big, something that everybody wants to be part of,” Mr. Torres, now 19, said. “So that’s why I asked my dad to move.”
The family settled in Elgin, a city of about 111,000 people located 35 miles northwest of Chicago. It was 2021, and the Covid-19 pandemic was still raging. Mr. Torres set out to make friends and perfect his English while attending classes online. It was a challenge, but he tried not to complain. His family had sacrificed so much for him, and he was determined to make it work.
“They wanted to give me the option to pursue the education I wanted, and so I made the best of it,” he said.
As the world reopened and Mr. Torres transitioned to in-person classes, he threw himself into high school life, intent on filling out his résumé so that he would have a strong chance at earning scholarships for college. He volunteered at a local animal shelter and participated in student government. When it was time to apply for college, he set his sights on Loyola University Chicago, the Jesuit-affiliated research university with more than 17,000 students. With his success in Advanced Placement classes, plus his involvement in extracurriculars, Mr. Torres was a competitive candidate.
He was ultimately offered a spot, but the financial burden loomed large. Mr. Torres knew the cost would require further sacrifice from his family, and he wanted to do whatever he could to keep the costs down. After talking to a counselor at his high school, he decided to apply to a different school, one still affiliated with the Jesuits and housed within Loyola University, but distinct in nearly every other way.
Named for Pedro Arrupe, S.J., the superior general of the Jesuits in the tumultuous decades following the Second Vatican Council, Arrupe College was opened at Loyola University Chicago in 2015. It was an experiment within Jesuit higher education to provide poorer students with an option of attending a two-year college, at little or no cost, that led to an associate’s degree and a clear pathway to eventual graduation from a traditional four-year university.
The idea behind the school, according to Michael Garanzini, S.J., president of Loyola from 2001 to 2015, was to create an environment in which students who might fall through the cracks at larger, traditional four-year universities would have access to multiple layers of support, so that they would have the opportunity to thrive. Recruitment focused on historically marginalized communities, including Black and Latino populations, particularly students who would be the first in their families to attend college.
Steve Katsouros, S.J., was the first dean and executive director of Arrupe College. As he and his team built the institution, he said, they were guided by three concerns—retention, completion and graduation—that formed what he called his “north star.”
“What are the obstacles that prevent students from being successful?” he remembers asking. “Let’s identify those and let’s address them.”
The goal was not, Father Katsouros said, to create “a Loyola lite,” but instead to form an institution that offered a solid education along with a community that supported students by helping them overcome a variety of challenges that could hinder their success, including mental health, food insecurity, legal challenges and technology needs.
Once the first class enrolled at Arrupe, in 2015, Father Katsouros said the message to them was: Help us build a community that can help you thrive.
“The secret sauce for Arrupe,” he said, “is community and belonging.”
That desire to create community drove nearly every decision in the school’s early days.
Take the free breakfasts and lunches, available to every student at Arrupe. At first glance, the meals seem an obvious way to reduce costs for students. But they also serve a second purpose, bringing students together twice a day, where they can chat, get to know one another and strengthen their bonds.
Seeing What Is Possible
In addition to forming a supportive community, Father Katsouros said that addressing financial challenges head on proved to be a particularly important component for ensuring a student’s success. Some students graduate from high school and, faced with the financial need of their families, choose to work full time. Giving up that stream of income to go to college feels impossible to some students. To address that, Father Katsouros said, class schedules at Arrupe were designed to give students the opportunity to work 20 to 25 hours per week, so that they can continue to earn money. Plus, students are given help developing the skills they will need to thrive in a traditional university.
That’s why Jacquelyn Luz-Martinez ultimately chose Arrupe.
Ms. Luz-Martinez had initially planned to join the Navy. The fifth of seven children, she wanted some independence from her family. Her parents were supportive but could be overly involved. Most of her peers attended the neighborhood high school, but she took a different path, enrolling at Rickover Naval Academy, a public school in Chicago’s Portage Park neighborhood.
“I wanted to be in a space where I could build myself from zero,” she recalled, and the military school offered a fresh start. She had planned on joining the military after high school but changed her mind and set her sights on college.
Her father told her that his dream was for one of his children to attend Loyola University, situated not far from the family’s home. Ms. Luz-Martinez applied and was accepted, but again chose a different path, deciding to enroll at Arrupe.
“I felt confident in my decision,” she said. “The conflict that I had was that my dad wanted me to go to Loyola.”
For Ms. Luz-Martinez, like many Arrupe students, finances played a part in her decision. Arrupe made more economic sense. But it was more than money. Ms. Luz-Martinez said she stepped back and considered where she was in her own educational journey and discerned that Arrupe made more sense for other reasons, too.
At the time, she didn’t feel ready for the heavy courseload a traditional four-year college required. Plus, she realized there were unspoken rules about navigating college life that she couldn’t rely on her family to teach her. Ms. Luz-Martinez’s parents had both arrived in the United States from Mexico decades ago seeking work; her father is a roofer and her mother cleans houses. Ms. Luz-Martinez is the first in her family to attend college and lacked a larger network to go to with questions about school.
What ultimately sold Ms. Luz-Martinez on Arrupe was the promise that the entire community would be there for her, helping her understand the unwritten rules of college, and would be devoted to her success. That is why each week, she made the journey downtown.
Building a Community of Trust
Arrupe’s location is intentional. It is located on Loyola’s Water Tower Campus, a single building situated in the heart of Chicago’s bustling Magnificent Mile. The campus is accessible to all parts of the city and its surrounding area. Nearby, tourists shop for Prada handbags, lunch at the RL Restaurant and check in to one of the best hotels in the world. In other buildings on either side of Arrupe, students study at Loyola’s business and law schools. The location, easily accessible by train from the city’s West and South Sides, helps Arrupe students imagine a future for themselves among Chicago’s professional class.
When I visited Arrupe this past July, students were wrapping up their summer term. Unlike traditional four-year institutions, Arrupe divides its school year into trimesters, so that students can spread out their coursework and invest time in internships and jobs during the regular academic year. Jobs play an important part in Arrupe’s curriculum; students are offered substantial help to find professional work experience while they are in school.
No detail is too small when it comes to forming community. The ID cards for Arrupe’s roughly 350 students give no indication they are enrolled in a unique college within the larger university. They have gold and maroon borders, black text and “Loyola University Chicago” emblazoned prominently above the photo. Arrupe students are invited to Loyola events, and they are encouraged to use the libraries, dining halls and gyms. “Rambler” pride is instilled in them, and the goal is that they be treated no differently than any other Loyola student. That’s to help make a transition from Arrupe to Loyola as seamless as possible. And for good reason: In 2025, according to Arrupe, 53 of its 69 graduating students transferred to Loyola to continue their education.
David Keys is the associate dean for student success at Arrupe and comes from a long line of educators in his native Tennessee. He says he can trace his family’s teaching roots back to an early Black Lutheran church school in Louisiana, and he knew from a young age he wanted to work in education. Six years ago, he began working in student affairs at Arrupe.
He said that perhaps the most important part of his job is developing a sense of trust between students and the institution, so that the students learn that the support team he oversees, as well as the broader Arrupe community, has their backs.
That begins at orientation, which takes place over two weeks and includes an overnight trip to Woodstock, Ill., about 50 miles from campus, which is intended to introduce the students to the skills they will need to thrive in college and to build a sense of community.
“We get them on a bus, we take them out to the middle of nowhere and say, ‘Trust us,’” Mr. Keys said. “And I think a lot of trust is built within those two days.”
In addition to the standard college orientation fare—ice breakers, introductions and team-building activities—students focus on setting goals and learning the basics of college life: How long to set aside each day for studying. How much reading will be required.
But students also learn about how to handle delicate situations outside of the classroom that might be particularly prevalent among this community: How to communicate with family who might not understand the rigors of college life. Seeking out help for things like rent or food. Where to turn for support amid upheaval caused by immigration raids.
The school has a pantry on campus, which students use as they wish. Classes are not scheduled for Wednesdays, to give students more time to work, and each student gets a free laptop.
In addition to some of the practical assistance Mr. Keys and his team provide students, there’s also the emotional coaching. When students are readying to transfer to Loyola or another four-year institution, for example, some begin to question if they’re actually up to par. Mr. Keys says the Arrupe community is constantly confronting feelings of self-doubt.
“We’re always trying to figure out ways in which we can minimize that, or better prepare students as they move forward, to understand why they feel this way, to teach them how to use their own power and their own voice to change the narrative,” he said. “Because they do belong there.”
One way Arrupe does that? By hosting meetings with Loyola University faculty, to help introduce them to the concept of Arrupe and to secure some good will.
‘Nothing Is Going to Stop You’
Ruby Hernandez is one of the students who have felt empowered by her time at Arrupe College.
Ms. Hernandez saw how her parents, both immigrants from Mexico, struggled financially while she was growing up. Her mother is a receptionist at an optometrist’s office, and her father works in a car parts factory. When it came time to apply for college, Ms. Hernandez was elated that she gained admission to Loyola, which would fulfill her parents’ hopes that she attend college and keep her relatively close to their home in Waukegan, Ill. But while she was given scholarships, she would still need to take on debt to finance her education. That is partly why she chose to enroll at Arrupe.
“When you’re from a lower-income family, that’s what it ends up coming down to,” she said.
Attending Arrupe was also something of a family affair. Ms. Hernandez’s older brother, who now works for a soccer club in California, graduated from Arrupe before moving on to Loyola, as did her older cousin.
At Arrupe, Ms. Hernandez joined the entrepreneurship club and attended events at Loyola. She joined the nail club, where she made friends who bonded while choosing new shades of nail polish, and attended seminars on financial literacy.
That exposure to finance set her on a career path toward accounting. Those classes gave her the confidence to ask her parents questions about money, which is how she learned that her mom had been saving for Ms. Hernandez’s college education since she was a child. But she hadn’t invested the money, instead keeping in a low-yield savings account. Had her mother known more about compound interest and the value of stocks, Ms. Hernandez said, she could have made her money work harder. Ms. Hernandez said a lack of financial acumen is a common experience in immigrant communities, and she hopes that she can use the skills she has learned at Arrupe and Loyola to help others.
“It was always a constant worry about paying for everything,” she recalled.
Ms. Hernandez said that even though she thrived at both her high school, Cristo Rey, and at Arrupe, she felt “imposter syndrome” when she transferred to Quinlan School of Business at Loyola in 2023 to finish her bachelor’s degree.
“My whole life, I’ve always gone to diverse schools,” she said, “and that was the first time being in an environment where it wasn’t as diverse.”
While Ms. Hernandez pointed repeatedly to the financial incentives for choosing Arrupe, she said what sticks with her about her time there was the way professors and administrators cared for the students. The day I met her, she was back on campus to return a laptop the school had loaned her to use at Quinlan. It was gestures like that, she said, that drove everyone at Arrupe.
“Nothing is going to stop you from succeeding,” she said.
Success is evident from Arrupe’s statistics, especially when compared to other two-year schools.
About 40 percent of Arrupe’s students graduate in two years; of those, 73 percent go on to study for their bachelor’s degree. Those numbers are dramatically higher than at most community colleges. While collecting accurate data about community college graduation rates can be tricky, the National Center for Education Statistics estimates that only about 39 percent of students graduate from two-year institutions within six years of enrollment. The number of students Arrupe and similar schools serve is relatively modest compared to the millions of Americans enrolled in community colleges and other two-year schools, but its model is being replicated at other universities.
Father Katsouros left Arrupe and started the Come to Believe Network in 2020, with the goal of expanding the Arrupe model. In addition to Arrupe at Loyola University in Chicago, three other schools are part of that network: Dougherty Family College at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minn.; Seton College at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx; and Founder’s College at Butler University in Indianapolis.
Other Jesuit universities are adding two-year programs as well, including Fairfield University, which opened Fairfield Bellarmine in Bridgeport, Conn., in 2023; and Boston College, whose Messina College in Brookline, Mass., completed its first year in 2025.
A Network of Support
In the 10 years since Arrupe opened its doors, it has seen more than 600 students graduate, and many even come back to mentor current students.
John Cooke graduated from Arrupe in 2023 and, like most of his peers, then transferred to Loyola. He plans to take three years to finish his bachelor’s degree and has dreams of becoming a pediatric neurosurgeon.
The day we spoke, he was getting ready for his off-campus job, working with children with autism as a registered behavioral therapist.
Mr. Cooke said he initially was unsure about college. He had a full-time job at a staffing agency and thought he would continue to work after high school, save up money and perhaps enroll at a traditional four-year school later.
But he said his grandmother, Paulette McDavis, had always prioritized education, making him and his brother travel from their home in the Chicago neighborhood of Englewood to a charter school downtown, “where all the other smart kids are,” as he remembers her saying. When she heard that her grandson planned to take time off after high school, she contacted his guidance counselor, who then suggested to Mr. Cooke that he look into Arrupe. Mr. Cooke saw the strong community and the flexibility afforded to students and decided to enroll.
Mr. Cooke lived in campus housing both years he studied at Arrupe, and he said the school treated students with respect, helping them to reach their full potential. He looks back with awe that he was able to get so much one-on-one time not only with faculty and student advisers, but also with deans and other top-level administrators. That, he said, helped give him confidence to excel at Loyola and to find opportunities outside of school, such as when he spent time last summer studying at the University of Iowa in the radiation oncology department.
Looking back at the trajectory of his life so far, Mr. Cooke said he remains grateful to the team of educators and administrators at Arrupe and that he now helps other students at Loyola as part of the Rambler Brotherhood Project. He said he also acts as a booster for Arrupe, encouraging curious students to give it a chance.
“There are so many different, diverse people at Arrupe that can speak with you, just relate to your background, get you more involved, no matter the kind of background that you’re coming from, which was really important for me,” Mr. Cooke said. “Coming from a lower-income neighborhood, not growing up with any parents, I was able to find people at Arrupe to kind of play that role for me, who continue to play that role now.”
Martin Connell, S.J., took the helm as dean of Arrupe College last year. His desk is covered with open books and stacks of papers, so we met in an adjacent conference room. He said that even though he is relatively new to Arrupe, what struck him immediately was how committed to the mission the faculty and staff are. Still, external factors present all kinds of challenges.
The toughest part of his job, Father Connell said, is figuring out how best to support the students who need the most help—students, for instance, whose lives are touched by immigration issues or who are facing financially difficult situations at home.
“I can put out an anodyne email or public statements, but it really comes down to the care that students feel from professors and from staff members,” he said. “From my own encounters with students, they’re really feeling supported.”
Then there are wider demographic challenges facing higher education more broadly. About 75 percent of Arrupe’s student body is Latino, and the school is hoping to diversify the student body, particularly by enrolling more Black students.
Father Connell acknowledged that Arrupe is having trouble recruiting Black men to the school, a challenge he said is prevalent at many other colleges and universities. Arrupe has traditionally recruited at Catholic high schools in the Chicago area, which have a high population of Latino students. While the school has made increased efforts to recruit at more predominantly Black high schools, he said they are now reaching out to less traditional channels for recruitment, including faith leaders from Protestant and Muslim communities.
Then there are the financial challenges.
Keeping Arrupe affordable is essential for living out its mission. Tuition is listed at about $14,000 annually, and according to the school, 96 percent of students who graduated in 2024 left with no student debt. The school makes sure that students maximize available grants and scholarships and then fundraises to make up as much unmet need as possible. They are able to hold down costs by sharing some of the back-end administrative support with Loyola University and by working closely with admissions and financial aid teams from the wider university.
While the majority of Arrupe graduates continue their education at a four-year institution, with most of them choosing Loyola, Father Connell said the school has to do a better job preparing students for the workforce if they choose not to continue to a four-year institution.
During my visit to campus, I met up with Mr. Torres, the Arrupe student whose family had moved from Colombia to Elgin, Ill. He gave me a tour of the campus and said he had completed his classes and was awaiting graduation in August. He had secured his spot at Loyola and was looking forward to the transition in the fall. He earned a full-tuition scholarship and plans to major in finance. He hopes to work for a nonprofit organization, helping marginalized communities.
He explained how his experience at Arrupe helped him feel he could succeed in college and beyond: the work experiences, professors who helped him feel like he was a valued member of the community, his taking an ethics class in Spanish, his fellowship. It all added up to something more than he might have encountered at a larger school.
Part of that, he said, is because the school took such an interest in each student.
“Communication is so important here,” he said. “If you don’t communicate with your professor, they don’t know what’s going on with your life. But if they know what you’re going through, they will help you.”
Like many students, Mr. Torres struggled at first to find his place at Arrupe, describing those first days as “confusing.” His commute, nearly 90 minutes each way, was taking a toll. He was not able to spend much time on campus outside of class and felt he was missing out. Then the school helped him secure a dorm on campus, a coveted living situation.
The school offers only about 38 dorm rooms, and students are required to maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average and meet regularly with student affairs staff to keep their housing. Arrupe administrators are looking to expand programming for students who live on campus, to teach skills about independent living. Given the successes that students who live in dorms report—generally higher G.P.A.s and more opportunities to get involved on campus—the school is trying to secure more housing.
Housing allowed Mr. Torres the opportunity to become more involved. He signed up to tutor other students in math and signed up to be part of the school’s L.G.B.T.Q. alliance.
Concentrating his studies in finance, he participated in a fellowship that took him each week to the marble-lined hallways of Wintrust Bank downtown. The school’s special emphasis on work, and the experience of seeing how a major bank worked from the inside helped Mr. Torres imagine possibilities for himself.
“They gave us opportunities and they helped us believe in ourselves,” he said of Arrupe’s career services office.
He added, “everything feels like a little family.”
Empowered to Ask
Ms. Luz-Martinez, meanwhile, said she was empowered to ask questions and get the support she needed. “Once I got to college,” she said, her outlook shifted from worrying about what she did not know to finding answers for herself. “Even if I don’t know, I’m going to make it my mission to know.”
In giant white letters with gold shadows and set against a maroon background, “Cura Personalis” is emblazoned on the wall of a student lounge at Arrupe. A Latin phrase meaning “care for the whole person,” the concept appealed to Ms. Luz-Martinez, and it is something she said she has felt during her time at Arrupe. “I didn’t feel like I had the tools” to succeed at a four-year college, she recalled, but at Arrupe, she had the ability and access needed to sharpen those skills.
She recalled the first college-level class she ever took, a philosophy course, and the panic she felt when the professor assigned the first writing assignment. She said knowing that her professors shared a background similar with her own helped her feel at ease asking for help. So she reached out to her professor, who suggested she turn to a writing fellow.
“I asked them, ‘How do I go about even starting this paper? How do I make my ideas connect?’” she recalled.
Once she gained more confidence, Ms. Luz-Martinez paid it forward, signing up to be a peer educator so she could help other students succeed.
Ms. Luz-Martinez said that Arrupe also encourages faculty and staff to take seriously the challenges students face. Her family includes people who are undocumented, which has been stressful in the face of an aggressive crackdown by the federal government in recent months. A personal crisis affected her grades, threatening her high G.P.A. Rather than retreat and withdraw, she sought the counsel of professors and administrators who helped her rebound. She said she is not sure that she would have received that kind of intensive support at a larger university.
When it came time to choose a major—Arrupe offers associate degrees in liberal arts, social and behavioral sciences, and business administration—Ms. Luz-Martinez sought out advice from the school’s career advisor. She was drawn to criminal justice and embarked on an internship at Loyola’s law school, which is situated on the same downtown campus. There, she learned the role that social workers play in helping incarcerated people reintegrate into wider society. Already involved in helping in the broader community by volunteering with campus ministry to offer food, clothing and toiletries to unhoused people in Chicago, she decided social work was her goal and chose the social and behavioral sciences track.
One of the ancillary benefits of studying at Arrupe is that the skills learned by students can benefit their families as well. Ms. Luz-Martinez said she took advantage of the therapy offered to students. The college not only offers the services free of charge, but has two mental health professionals on staff, whose offices are readily accessible. Ms. Luz-Martinez said she learned the value of therapy and then suggested to her mom that she, as well as her siblings, might benefit, too.
Following graduation in August, Ms. Luz-Martinez is preparing to enroll at Loyola University. She said she is well prepared for the transition, even if she harbors some nerves about coming from Arrupe and what others might think.
Asked if her father, who had dreamed of one of his children attending Loyola, was happy to learn she would continue her studies there, Ms. Luz-Martinez did not have to think about it at all: “Oh, yes. He cried.”
Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.
Correction: Sept. 29; 5:00 p.m.: A previous version of this story misspelled the last name of Steve Katsouros, S.J., and incorrectly stated the founding year of the Come to Believe Network. It was founded in 2020.
This article appears in November 2025.
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