- May 11, 2026 Sister Stories
Sister Jeanne Janssen finds her perfect ministry as student success coach at Avila University
A self-described non-athlete, Sister Jeanne Janssen has become an indispensable fixture at Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri, especially in their Athletic Department. In her ninth year as a volunteer student success coach, she has built something rare: a ministry that draws equally on six decades of religious life, decades of teaching on multiple continents, and an unexpected love for a community of coaches, players and staff who have quietly claimed her as one of their own.
“I didn’t play sports in high school. I barely went to games, even when I was a high school teacher. I just wasn’t interested,” she says with a laugh. “Now I go to more games than I ever thought I would.”
In 2012, after three decades of mission work in Japan, the Philippines, China and the United States, Sister Jeanne joined Avila University as a student support specialist and ESL teacher. In 2017, she made a quiet decision to retire.
She spent a couple of months looking at other ways to serve — a hospital’s chemotherapy visiting program, a retirement home, Habitat for Humanity. None of them felt right. “I kept thinking, I’d really rather be here [at Avila],” she says. She walked into the Avila president’s office, asked if she could keep hanging around and still do what she was doing, and that’s what she’s doing now.
For her, it’s the perfect ministry. “I taught academic success courses, and that’s exactly what I meet with the students about,” shares Sister Jeanne. "I’m old enough that I’m relevant to the young people in a different way than someone in their 30s or 40s is. I don’t mom them or anything, but I can get away with some of that."
The Coach Who Never Played
Avila enrolls roughly 1,500 undergraduates, about 450 of whom are student athletes. Sister Jeanne is one of three staff members with the official student success coach designation. They meet regularly to share the list of students on probation or who need help. But she is the only one with an office in the athletic department itself. That placement, she says, changes everything.
She was first housed in the Hodes Center on campus but was soon lobbied to relocate to the field house by Shawn Summe, Avila’s vice president of Athletics and Student Affairs and chief mission integration officer. Though hesitant at first, she made the move. Her “office” was a desk in the hallway and not ideal for conversations with students. Eventually, the athletic department staff made it a high priority, and she got an office.
“When I used to be in another building and wanted to contact a coach about a student who didn’t show up for an appointment, it was hard — coaches don’t always answer emails,” she says. “Here, I see them in the hallway when I’m walking around the track.”
Sister Jeanne attends the athletic department’s twice-monthly meetings, where she learns which teams are traveling, which students are dealing with injuries or surgeries and which coaches are worried about a player’s focus. She also has a forum during those meetings to provide them with resources available to athletes.
When progress reports or midterm grades go out, the students struggling academically receive emails directing them to make an appointment with a student success coach.
Sister Jeanne then meets one-on-one with the students to diagnose what’s really going on — whether it’s missing assignments, test anxiety or something more personal. She connects them with tutoring, study and test-taking strategies and scheduling tools. And sometimes she just listens.
“They’ll come in to talk about their grades, but really, they’re talking about the fact that their grandmother had a stroke and they’re so far away,” she says. “I let them know when they need to be seeing a counselor, not me. But having time and space to just listen — that’s valuable.”
Shattering Perceptions
Shawn Summe, now, doesn’t hesitate when asked about Sister Jeanne’s impact. “She’s a difference maker in this athletic department,” he says. “Kids love being around her … they have perceptions about what a nun would be like, and she shatters those perceptions.”
That perception-shattering happens in small moments. S. Jeanne recalls a time when an athlete who, after a particularly direct conversation about his grades and his future, asked for a hug. “I’m not a hugger,” states Sister. Jeanne. “But what are you going to do? I’m not going to refuse a hug from this very fragile, at the moment, athletic kid.”
Another instance was with a dancer who came to Sister Jeanne every semester, struggling academically, resistant to suggestions but who never left without asking, “Are you coming to the game?” At first, Sister Jeanne was puzzled. “Is that really more important than everything we just discussed?” She came to understand, yes, in a way, it is. The student cared whether she showed up. That was its own kind of progress.
“When a student invites me to a game, I almost never say no,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll say I’ll try, or it depends on the weather. But when I sit out at the football games and am freezing cold, someone gives me a beanie hat. They even supplied me with a very comfy yard chair. I have a coach who cooks for his team on days the cafeteria’s not open, and he always brings me food.”
Sister Jeanne is even on the department’s group text thread. When baseball wins the phone chimes with congratulations. When teams travel, colleagues jump on to wish them luck. While she usually doesn’t write anything back, she loves their spirit.
The Mission That Holds It Together
Sister Jeanne is the only sister with a daily, consistent presence on Avila’s campus — a fact that has gradually reshaped how she’s introduced and how she introduces herself. When she arrived in 2012, her name tag said simply “Jeanne Janssen.” Colleagues called her Jeanne, and she didn’t correct them.
Now, she is Sister Jeanne everywhere. Coaches introduce her that way. She introduces herself that way. The shift, she says, was mostly organic — something Summe and the athletic department set in motion without her prompting. “At first I thought, I don’t have to be the ‘old sister.’ But then I thought: well, why not? That’s added value.”
Part of What Was, Not Last of What Will Be
Nine years in, Sister Jeanne Janssen has become something that can’t quite be put in a job description. She doesn’t think of herself as carrying a legacy. She thinks of herself as showing up — to the meetings, to the hard conversations, to the games, to the ones that turn out not to be about grades at all.
“I feel more of what I’m part of than what I’m the last of,” she says. And the field house — the coaches, the athletes, the staff and the students — have made clear they feel the same way.
By Sarah Baker, Assistant Director of Communications