The Inaugural Address of Joseph J. McGowan, Jr.
The Third President of Bellarmine College
Friday, the Twelfth of October, Nineteen Hundred and Ninety
… these events remind us once again of the truths
that the world is incredibly rich and diverse in its cultures, ethnic
groups, races, religions, and creeds, and yet that the world is finally
one in its basic humanity, needs and interests.
Bellarmine College: Hope and Vision
Chairman Thurman, Archbishop Kelly, Mayor Abramson,
Judge-Executive Armstrong, members of the Bellarmine community, honored
guests, family and friends:
Colleges are hopeful institutions in that they anticipate
a future for society and believe that they can play a role in shaping
the future and society. While colleges exist for the future,
they exist in the present, and thus their work in shaping the
future is made all the easier or all the more difficult, depending on
how the world is faring.
I believe that we are beginning to emerge from one of
those times in the world in which we have been so consumed by the
present, its promises and problems, that we have not been as mindful of
our future as we should.
We are, finally, simple creatures who make better sense
of our mortal lives and are more fully human when we live with a sense
that we are part of the flow of life, of a continuum, with a future in
this world and in the next. If we have a sense of future, we can hope.
We need images and symbols to nurture and sustain hope
and we are presently and suddenly awash with such images.
I will briefly identify some of the developments and
images in the world, in Kentucky, in Louisville, among college
students, and at Bellarmine which nurture hope.
In the World
While we anxiously await developments in the Middle East
and pray for a peaceful diplomatic political solution to the situation
there, we are just beginning to come to terms with the peace and
democracy which has broken out in the rest of the world. Many
observations can be made about recent events, but three are
particularly significant for me.
The first considers the catastrophic collapse of
communism and the rise of democracy in Russia, Germany, and Eastern
Europe. While there is serious concern about how economic and social
problems in these countries will be resolved, the rate of change, the
breadth of change, the depth of change, the direction of change, and
the unexpectedness of change have all emphatically affirmed an
essential condition of hope… the ever present possibility of change and
growth.
The second is that these events, among others, have
further deepened our awareness that the international world, of which
we are a part, is interconnected and interdependent. Significant
developments in the Mid-East crisis include the emergence of the United
Nations as a strong and important international authority as well as
the broad-based support for international law. From economic markets to
environmental issues, the lunar perspective and image of our planet as
one little blue and white ball suspended in the cosmic darkness is
increasingly poignant.
The third is that these events remind us once again of
the truths that the world is incredibly rich and diverse in its
cultures, ethnic groups, races, religions, and creeds, and yet that the
world is finally one in its basic humanity, needs and, interests.
In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the historic
passage of the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act has also torn down
long standing walls, lifted hearts, and unified our state as we attend
to our future in the education of our children.
In Kentucky
In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the historic passage of
the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act has also torn down long standing
walls, lifted hearts, and unified our state as we attend to our future
in the education of our children.
The promise of this reform is that Kentucky, which
already has many of the nation’s best primary and secondary schools in
its city of Louisville, is now positioned to bring the rest of the
state, where needed, to the cutting edge of American education, and,
because of the structure and organization of the plan, to maintain that
prominence for years to come.
So compelling is the concept and spirit of this reform,
directed as it is at primary and secondary education, that the public
and private colleges and universities in the state are beginning to
work together for the first time in history to develop a coordinated
approach to higher education to assure that Kentucky has, and will
continue to have, a higher education system which builds on the new
strength of its primary and secondary schools.
In Louisville
Through the leadership and spirit of our government,
business, and community leaders, including our Jefferson County
Judge-Executive David Armstrong and my new kin, Mayor Jerry Abramson,
this city and area is experiencing enormous growth, vitality, and
progress, and has moved to the forefront of American cities in terms of
its dramatic economic growth and exceptional quality of life.
The vision and leadership of the city of Louisville,
Jefferson County, and Greater Louisville, including our neighbors just
across the Ohio River in Indiana, are being realized and supported by a
broad scale cooperative partnership among the government, business,
and educational communities in an unprecedented way that is itself a
reason for hope.
Reflecting in this unique partnership, and paralleling in
local significance the Kentucky Education Reform Act, is a report and a
blueprint for the future issued this past Labor Day by the Louisville
Chamber of Commerce entitled Transforming the Present, Shaping the
Future.
This was the first annual report of the Education and
Workforce Committee, a strategic alliance to address issues related to a
quality workforce for the area. The report notes that over the next
five years, employees will need higher levels of education than at the
present and that redesigned jobs will reflect advances in the science
and technology, as well as in market globalization. Of interest to
Robert Bellah, no doubt, would be the report’s reminder that in the
future, working in teams will play a stronger and more critical role in
all industries.
Further, the report calls for employees to have better
oral and written communication skills, clearer thinking and better
logical reasoning skills, greater self-direction, and a fuller
understanding of foreign cultures and languages. It calls for increased
reading ability, mathematical understanding and application skills,
and increased proficiency with computers and computer applications.
Among College Students
College students are an important barometer and mirror of
what is happening in the larger society and culture. Over the past few
years, media and national surveys have regularly noted increases in
political apathy, alcohol abuse, crime, racism, psychological stress,
and materialism among college students. These matters have
appropriately demanded the attention of those of us concerned with
students and higher education, not only because of the difficulties
these problems create in the present for students and student life, but
because of what they might bode for the quality of individual lives
and society in the future.
Despite these concerns, even in recent years, college
students have encouraged hope as most are happy, competent, and
successful individuals, capable of serious academic work when properly
taught and challenged, capable of great friendships, of much love, and
of dedicated, generous service to others.
Students deserve our greatest respect because coming of
age an any time in any society has always been a challenging
experience, but today’s students must come of age in rapidly changing,
pluralistic, relativistic, materialistic, and competitive world, and
must do so in many cases without the benefit of sustaining coherent
personal values.
When most of us were growing up, the traditional
educating agents in our lives were the family, schools, churches,
communities, and government. While television was available, it had not
yet emerged as a significant educating agent.
For today’s students, however, the power of the
traditional educating agents has been diminished by social and cultural
developments.
As the power of these educating agents has waned, the
power and dominance of television has grown to the point where it is,
and has been for some time, the major educating and socializing agent
in our society.
The very values – civil, moral, ethical, academic and
personal – that we so easily criticize this generation for having lost,
have in fact never been possessed by so many of them.
Our educational failures with the young are not so much a
function of their inadequacies as learners as they are a function of
the inadequacies of the traditional educating agents in comparison to
television.
Students are taught materialism, excessive
competitiveness, and self-interest through television, but the values
which our students need most are not these shallow, fragmented, and
transitory ones but rather the deeper, sustaining, traditional human
values that are still best taught in families, in schools and in
churches, and through the strong support and good example of community
and government leaders.
…Bellarmine was recognized as 10th in the nation
among private institutions just ahead of Yale, Columbia, and MIT.
Columbia and MIT have recently announced five-year $1 billion capital
campaigns, clearly suggesting their dissatisfaction with living in the
shadow of Bellarmine.
A hopeful phenomenon among the college students in recent
years is that despite the inadequacies of our culture’s education and
socialization process, there still are so many competent, happy, and
effective people in our colleges.
And the news is getting even better. College students, in
the most recent annual national survey of freshman attitudes, are
showing increasing dissatisfaction with a life characterized by little
else than the purist of wealth and material goods, and are beginning to
show significant attitudinal changes. Once again, as in the ‘60s, but
with less innocence and greater maturity, students are expressing
greater interest in environmental and other social political and moral
issues.
There is among students a growing tendency toward greater
activism, as well as an increasing number of students who state that
“influencing social values” is “very important to them.” In fact, the
percentage of freshmen reporting participation in organized
demonstrations in the last year was higher than the percentage reported
in the late ‘60s. Further, the highest percentage of students in the
survey’s history expressed a strong desire “to influence social
values.”
The same national survey, conducted each year for the
past 23 years under the direction of Alexander Astin at UCLA, also
shows significant increases in the percentage of students who:
- plan to participate in community action;
- wish to promote racial understanding; and
- wish to influence the political structure.
At Bellarmine
Not only is hope supported by these developments in the
world, in Kentucky, in Louisville, and among college students, but also
what is happening at Bellarmine. Bellarmine College was recently cited
by Money magazine in its publication Money Guide to Best
Buys In American Colleges and Universities as 10th among the 100
best private colleges and universities in the country. Using 17
criteria for academic excellence, and considering academic value in
relation to cost, Bellarmine was recognized as 10th in the nation among
private institutions just ahead of Yale, Columbia and MIT. Columbia
and MIT have recently announced five-year $1 billion capital campaigns,
clearly suggesting their dissatisfaction with living in the shadow of
Bellarmine.
The main reason for this recognition and for the academic
excellence it represents is the Bellarmine College faculty.
Bellarmine’s faculty are the greatest resource of the
institution in that they are well qualified, dedicated to teaching and
to students, and committed to teaching each student as an individual
and as a whole person. Bellarmine’s faculty therefore, are not only
effective teachers in the classroom, but outside the classroom as well,
and our students regularly testify to the faculty’s exceptional
availability and personal interest.
Since excellent teaching is Bellarmine’s main
institutional characteristic and proudest achievement, and since the
Bellarmine faculty are collectively the institution’s greatest teaching
resource, Bellarmine College will do everything in its power to
further support and encourage good teaching.
Vision Built On Hope
The future of Bellarmine College will build on, among
other things, the hope nurtured and sustained by developments in
today’s world, in Kentucky, in Louisville, among college students and
at Bellarmine.
Faculty
Since excellence in teaching is Bellarmine’s main
institutional characteristic and proudest achievement, and since the
Bellarmine faculty are collectively the institution’s greatest teaching
resource, Bellarmine College will do everything in its power to
further support and encourage good teaching.
Faculty research, for its own sake and for teaching, will
be encouraged and supported as well.
And faculty development, federal and private foundation
grantsmanship, competitive compensation at all ranks, and fuller
participation in college governance will characterize Bellarmine’s
faculty life in the years ahead.
Students
The intellectual and personal growth of students is
Bellarmine’s major goal.
At Bellarmine, the curriculum and the co-curriculum will
be integrated to the fullest extent possible and both will share
responsibility for achieving the academic goal of the college for the
intellectual and personal growth of students.
In the integrated student life of the college, the
sacredness and value of each student as a person will be respected, and
diversity in the student body will be aggressively pursued.
Bellarmine students will be encouraged to accept
obligations and responsibilities to the larger group, and clear and
fair policy and procedure will guide the behavior of students for the
common good.
As part of its teaching responsibility to students,
Bellarmine College will make every effort to support their intellectual
and personal growth to the fullest extent possible. This support will
include, among other things, the construction and renovation of
facilities to enhance these activities, as well as the appropriate
development of staff and budgets; we will have first rate academic
support and orientation programs, counseling, career planning and
placement, and health services; there will be successful varsity,
intramural, and recreational athletic programs; and we will have a
strong campus ministry program with ecumenical outreach and oriented
toward social and community service.
In Bellarmine College student life, concern for and
service to others will be strongly and actively encouraged, as will
environmental and international awareness.
To create greater diversity in the student body, to
provide more students with the opportunity to live and learn in the
college community, and to support broader regional admissions
recruiting, Bellarmine College will continue to implement its plan to
increase its resident student population and thus to create a greater
residential character for Bellarmine College through the format of
residential colleges. The present and traditional commitment to
Bellarmine College to commuter students from the Louisville area will be
vigorously maintained. The development of the resident student
population will augment Bellarmine’s traditional commitment to commuter
students.
It is through the liberal arts and sciences that
Bellarmine College can best address not only the intellectual and
personal educational needs of our students, but the educational needs
of Louisville, Kentucky, and the world.
Curriculum
Liberal
Arts and Sciences
With excellent teaching as the distinguishing
characteristic of Bellarmine College, and the intellectual and personal
growth of students as our major goal, the liberal arts and sciences
are and will continue to be the fundamental disciplines through which
the purposes of Bellarmine College are achieved.
It is through the liberal arts and sciences that
Bellarmine College can best address not only the intellectual and
personal educational needs of our students, but the educational needs
of Louisville, Kentucky, and the world.
For these are the disciplines, the organizations of
knowledge, the intellectual content which can best educate to
international and global awareness, and which can best create an
education citizenry in the city and in the commonwealth, including
leaders for this area and beyond in education, business, and
government.
It is mainly through the liberal arts and sciences that
reading, writing, speaking, and thinking skills are most effectively
developed, and it is through the mathematics, science, and computer
courses that students are directly familiarized with advances in
science and technology, with mathematical understanding and application
skills, and with enhanced proficiency in computers and computer
application.
Most importantly for human development, it is through the
liberal arts and sciences that we can best teach students to
understand and appreciate their personal value and self-worth and to
develop positive self-esteem. It is through such a curriculum that
students can best learn to understand, value, and appreciate others as
well in both their diversity in their common human bond.
In the liberal arts, for example, the issues of
individualism and commitment to the common good can be considered, as
well as materialism and spirituality, competitiveness and cooperation,
love and hate, war and peace, and good and evil.
It is through the liberal arts as well that a student can
come to more thoroughly understand social institutions like the
family, schools, churches, communities, and government. Through the
liberal arts, a student can also learn about being a person and about
the world in such a way as to enable him or her to have a strong
family, to create good schools, to participate fully in the life of his
or her church, and to be as successful and worthy community or
government leader.
Finally, knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences has
such a broad range and integrity that new alliances of traditional
disciplines allow for many important and compelling interdisciplinary
approaches to the study, among other things, of human experience.
The study of mass communication, for example, has emerged
as a legitimate interdisciplinary area of knowledge and is an
important vehicle for helping students understand the mass media for
enabling them to use for their intellectual and personal growth, rather
than as a mindless distraction from it.
As an application of its commitment to the liberal
arts and sciences as the keystone of its academic programs, and as a
further reflection of its commitment to the workforce of the city,
state, and region, Bellarmine college will continue to improve and
develop its professional schools and programs in business, nursing and
education.
Professional Education
As an application of its commitment to the liberal arts
and sciences as the keystone of its academic programs, and as a further
reflection of its commitment to the workforce of the city, state, and
region, Bellarmine college will continue to improve and develop its
professional schools and programs in business, nursing and education.
The purpose of these programs is to produce for the
regional, national, and international workforce, men and women educated
in the full knowledge, competencies, and skills of their individual
professions, but educated as well in the liberal arts and sciences, and
thus informed in their professional life by the deeper, sustaining
intellectual and personal values available through the study of the
liberal arts.
Bellarmine will continue through its liberal arts and
science graduates, as well as through its business, nursing, and
education graduates to serve Louisville, and Kentucky, and the world
with ethical, moral, dedicated, and competent professionals.
Adult and Continuing Education
Finally, Adult and Continuing Education at Bellarmine has
been steadily growing in recent years as many new programs have been
developed and have succeeded and will continue to develop and support
this important activity of the college.
Facilities
To grow as an institution and to bring Bellarmine College
to its next level requires major capital investment in new and
renovated facilities.
Planned for student life are new residence halls,
renovated residence halls, and expanded food service facilities, a
lifetime and recreation sports facility, a student services building,
and a new improved student center.
While these facilities are needed, planned, and will be
built as soon as possible within the next few years, two facilities have
first priority – a classroom and office facility for the Allan and
Donna Lansing School of Nursing and Education, and Bellarmine College
Library.
It is my pleasure on this delightful occasion to announce
our plans to break ground for the Nursing and Education School on
March 22, 1991 with anticipated completion for the spring, 1992
semester. In addition to providing more comfortable and attractive
quarters for the School of Nursing and Education, this facility will
provide the overall college with much needed classroom space.
Secondly, it is my distinct personal pleasure, given all
that has been said today about the centrality and importance of our
academic life, to announce our plans to break ground on the new
Bellarmine College Library in March, 1992 with expected completion for
the fall, 1993 semester.
Beyond the campaign, however, I am personally
committed to subsequently and substantially increasing our endowment
within the next 10 years, with unrestricted and restricted funds sought
for faculty chairs, financial aid, and scholarships for top scholars,
international students and student leaders.
Resources
Other than tuition and fees, the major sources of college
revenue are funds raised for capital projects, funds raised to increase
the endowment, and funds raised by the endowment.
Bellarmine College is in the midst of a $20 million
capital campaign to fund the library, the School of Nursing and
Education, and several of the other projects already mentioned. This
campaign is well along, and with three and a half years to go, I am
pleased to report that $16.8 million have already been raised. We look
forward to the successful completion of the campaign and to the
completion of the projects it will fund.
Beyond the campaign, however, I am personally committed
to subsequently and substantially increasing our endowment within the
next 10 years, with unrestricted and restricted funds sought for
faculty chairs, financial aid, and scholarships for top scholars,
international and minority students, and student leaders.
Conclusion
While an institutional vision looks to a future based on
an understanding of the present, we must keep in mind that the present
includes the past.
And so my vision for Bellarmine College includes the past
and the present and thus achieves perspective and texture.
A Bellarmine faculty member recently told me something
that would make Yogi Berra proud. He said that “while Bellarmine is
very young, it has had a long history.”
I don’t think he knew how right he was, for the history
of Bellarmine and therefore my vision for the institution goes back
well past its mere 40 years of existence, past my distinguished and
youthful predecessors, all of whom, marvelously, share the dais with me
this afternoon; past the Jesuits who left a college in St. Mary,
Kentucky in the 1840s to staff and develop Fordham University which
celebrates its 150th year; - past the brilliant and controversial
Roberto Bellarmino, and all the way back to those identified in
Professor Wade Hall’s beautiful commemorative poem – to “Aristotle and
Thomas and Homer.”
In my vision for Bellarmine, therefore, I acknowledge all
those who have thought or spoken or written about the liberal arts and
sciences through the ages.
My role as president it to understand, interpret,
and advance this collective vision of the Bellarmine community, a great
vision build on great hope… I ask you to join and support me, and I
ask our God to bless us all as we now begin together to realize the
rich vision and enormous potential of Bellarmine College “in veritatis
amore.”
I acknowledge the Catholic origin and tradition of
Bellarmine College and the pioneers of the Catholic higher education in
Kentucky, most notably for us Archbishop Floersh who founded
Bellarmine. We will respect that tradition in the academic excellence
of our programs, in a vigorous intellectual climate which affirms among
other things the compatibility of faith and reason, and in the
nurturance of a college community and culture which reflects basic
Judeo-Christian values, including concern for each individual as a
whole person, and caring for and service to others.
I acknowledge the brilliance, vision, and generosity of
spirit which characterized the presidencies of Msgr. Horrigan, Sr.
Angelice, and most recently Dr. Petrick, after whom we have just named
our new residence hall.
I acknowledge Fr. Louis, Thomas Merton, whose
intellectual and spiritual presence is palpable among the gentle hills
and glades of this beautiful campus and whose intellect, ideas, values,
and spirit will inspire the development of Bellarmine College as the
intellectual center of the region considering such issues as peace and
justice, world religions, and East-West and North-South dialogues.
I acknowledge the 8,000 alumni and alumnae of Bellarmine
College from the pioneer class of 1954 to the present, as well as the
alumnae of Ursuline College, our mother’s maiden name, who graduated in
the distinguished Ursuline education tradition in Kentucky from the
‘20s to the 60s. All of you are the legacy of Bellarmine and a proud
legacy you are.
And finally, I acknowledge the trustees, faculty,
students, and administrators of Bellarmine, as I am fully aware of my
vision for Bellarmine is actually our vision and the vision of ages
past.
My role as presidents is to understand, interpret, and
advance this collective vision of the Bellarmine community, a great
vision built on great hope.
And hope does ring out today in all its glory… form
Berlin to Bellarmine, from Leningrad to Louisville, from Yokahoma to
Okolona, and from Rone to Rooster Run… hope does ring out.
I am mindful of this hope and of all of you today as I
formally assume the presidency of this special place. I ask you to join
and support me, and I ask our God to bless us all as we now begin
together to realize the rich vision and enormous potential of
Bellarmine College “in vertitatis amore.”
Thank you.
Joseph J. McGowan
October 12, 1990
References
Astin, Alexander W.; Berz, Ellyne R.; and Korn, William S.
1989. The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 1989.
Los Angeles: University of California, The Higher Education Research
Institute.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
1990. Campus Life: In Search of Community. Princeton, N.J.;
Princeton University Press.