AN ACADEMIC PROFILE
Wymard, Eleanor B.
come a bit suspicious when a new rigidity is demanded as women and minorities appear at the gates." The inherent gall of this new and pious insistence on merit is that the white male...
...The President of Rosemont College, Ann Marie Durst, SHCJ, thought it wise to cancel my visit because of the resignation of the Academic Dean...
...That movement from top down therefore impedes any movement I may wish to make up...
...Not only the inevitable television crews were idling there, but every radio reporter in the city, hordes of photographers with their motor-driven Nikons, and a rabble of the inky wretches who live by pen and typewriter, called, in this allegedly late twilight of Guttenberg, the writing press...
...We simply had to rename the composition of the Board from the three major superiors plus two elected members of the religious community to 'the Board of Trustees shall comprise fifteen lay persons and fifteen Sisters of Charity, Seton Hill.' The only other thing we had to do was to dissolve the College Corporators, all sisters, who met perfunctorily once a year to hear the president's report...
...A president may or may not be "talking to someone on the side," but where boards of corporators meet frequently, and/or the religious community comprises more than one-half the members of the board of trustees, and/or search committees are scarce, and/or religious faculty live in campus residences shared with administrators from the congregation--the lay faculty sense the workings of a phantom authority beyond the visible structure of the college governance...
...Trinity "in its seventy-six years as a college stands dedicated to meeting the educational needs of women...
...Dorothy Kelly, OSU, now President of the College of New Rochelle for five years, refers to the "endless hours" she spent in the late 60s explaining and untangling convent and college relationships, which by then had accumulated seventy years of layered history...
...Such anecdotes from an antique past are legion on the campuses of women's Catholic colleges...
...How did I, a Ph.D...
...Without the Sisters, after all, the college would not exist...
...A variety of arrangements exists between colleges and congregations regarding the salaries of religious women faculty and administrators...
...Little is known about how women accept responsibility for their own lives when reacting to a controlling matriarchy...
...Their goals seem to reflect not only the traditional values of academic excellence, but also the opportunities open to them by the governance of the individual college...
...From talking and sharing experiences at nine women's Catholic colleges, my discovery is that their governance structure is not expressed by a single model...
...Openness results when a college does not depend upon the religious order for financial " support...
...I asked...
...Quite simply, "Where, oh where's the Reverend MotherT' connotes either a sense of invisible convent power or its absence...
...An old friend at UPI called up the day the story broke to say Rudd was leaving the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) he'd helped to organize at the end of the 1960s...
...at best, it is the closest imitation women have to the successful "Old Boy Network...
...The self-initiation of academic laywomen rather corresponds, then, to the permissions and prohibitions--written and unwritten--of the college governance structure...
...In "dosed" institutions feelings of estrangement are attributed to the belief that Sister faculty are privy to decisions that remain secret to the laywoman, thus allowing the religious woman power over her...
...By-laws indicate that the President shall appoint administrative officers, but the quick-witted President, Kathleen Feeley, SSND, points out that the method of selection is not stated...
...The inherent gall of this new and pious insistence on merit is that the white male aristocracy is implying that it is dominant through desert...
...The College of Notre Dame of Maryland publishes Options, an information sheet for continuing-education students...
...I don't think we ever forget that...
...Laywomen faculty in women's Catholic colleges feel valued, however, by religious administrators...
...For those who tolerate more prohibitions than permissions, perhaps adaptation is the best way to handle *the potential conflict between self-effacement and self-realization...
...Tim Crouse was there from the Village Voice, and Ron Rosenbaum from that Great Republic of Letters which is the only home of writers who do not draw salaries...
...The pragmatic financial exigencies make many lay faculty acutely aware that they could be replaced more economically by religious...
...The only thing missing was bunting...
...With similar candor, Sister Kathleen Feeley admits that the College of Notre Dame of Maryland "could not be one of such academic standard if we all of a sudden were paying full salaries to everybody...
...The Members, whose functions President Joel Read, SSSF, describes as similar to those of a "holding corporation," appoint two sisters from the congregation to the Board of Trustees, and receive an annual report on fiscal and academic policies...
...The President's Report 1975-1976 indicates "the contributed services of the School Sisters of Notre Dame who served as faculty, administrators, and staff members . . . are valued at $473,783...
...Early in her term when hard economic decisions had to be made regarding overstaffed departments, Sister Dorothy won the confidence of lay faculty...
...Because options is an important word in the rhetoric of the women's movement, I chose to visit those colleges which particularly use the vocabulary of liberation...
...No one was angry about having had her experiences neglected, but each was happy to have them discovered...
...By focusing on laywomen faculty within women's Catholic colleges, my discoveries will eventually contribute, I hope, to a more comprehensive understanding of the academic woman...
...A religious order certainly has to exercise protective controls, but a president can't also be talking to someone on the side...
...The original 15-member Board has expanded to 25 lay persons, but the five elected representatives from the School Sisters of St...
...Even property decisions are made by the Board of Trustees...
...Italics mine...
...But it was final control, of course, in the long run...
...The College of New Rochelle educates "women tod a y - f o r tomorrow...
...Francis...
...In order to develop a pool of qualified administrators, Rosemont has begun an internship program whereby SHCJs can learn the operation of campus offices...
...The by-laws of Alverno do not stipulate that an SSSF must be president, whereas Emmanuel designates that a president is to be elected from the religious congregation at large...
...The supportive atmosphere described by Lucy Cromwell is articulately assessed from another viewpoint by a psychology professor who considers leaving her campus because of being "'too comfortable.' A matriarchial structure provides nurturance but I am afraid I could stay forever and not grow anymore...
...Sylvia Mum learned by doing, and now she is Director of Development at Alverno, a unique position for a woman in higher education...
...Laywomen professors on campuses where strong tradition excludes them from high academic posts are often more caustic: "The college belongs to them...
...An "open" system operates where elected search committees act, and where members from sponsoring religious communities are elected for their expertise to boards of trustees rather than placed in seats by virtue of their administrative offices within the religious congregation...
...In 1968, Alverno College (Milwaukee, 1951) elected, for example, its first lay Board of Trustees...
...We live on private cut-de-sacs...
...I became aware of the need for more information regarding the professional development, upward mobility and personal aspirations of such faculty when I was invited to react to the preliminary designs for a "Developmental Conference for Women Faculty Members and Women Academic Administrators" at Chatham College, March 29, 1977...
...Tina Stretch, the thirty-twoyear-old Director of Mundetein's Week-End Collegeoffers without temerity that her ambition is to become the first laywoman president of Mundelein...
...Seated in her tastefully appointed Williamsburg office, Sister Dorothy colorfully admits "bearing scars" from those difficult days...
...But suspicion also hovers in "open" systems...
...The fear lay faculty have for their jobs is an existing reality...
...But Mark Rudd's surrender meant the end of an era all the same, and I decided to go down and watch him settle up Wednesday morning with not much more by way of reason than a curiosity to see the last act, having spent so many weeks at the first...
...Not only have laypersons always outnumbered religious on the Board of Trustees, but two laypersons from the Board are also elected to full membership on the Board of Corporators...
...Similar to Alverno's, the Board of Trustees of Emmanuel College (Boston, 1919), having been composed entirely of Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur, also divided in the early seventies...
...I suppose they should run it...
...Waiting for press conferences to start, for meetings to break up, for announcements and releases and the infinite variety of "no comment" with which those who Commonweal: 6~7...
...It is as surprising for laywomen academics at Carlow College to know that search committees operate on other campuses as it is for faculty at New Rochelle to know that search committees are not standard procedure...
...Jimmy Breslin was there from the News, so round and stolid he seemed to be smuggling contraband beneath his suitcoat...
...I have the feeling things come down from the top, the top being convent authorities...
...Although the possibilityof such rewards encourages some women and the impossibility exasperates others, all are angered by structures which eliminate search committees and faculty advice for major administrative offices...
...Mundelein has also funded academic laywomen to pursue graduate degrees for new programs...
...Variations exist to the left and right of these basic systems represented by Alverno and Emmanuel...
...Quotas are a necessary means to the good end of justice...
...Ironically, laywomen professors are generally unaware of the policies of similar colleges...
...Sisters of Mercy and men chair all departments, except Nursing...
...I am going to leave," she answered...
...The climate of Mundelein is very favorable toward a laywoman president...
...Based on these interviews, I have found, however, that the role of the laywoman inside the women's Catholic college is in a state of flux...
...Murray Kempton was there from the Post, looking like a long-necked crane with a sense of humor...
...Francis have diminished to two...
...Neither is it a problem for laywomen to be department heads, for they hold these positions on every campus...
...At worst, such a process is called "inbreeding...
...Elevated to nostalgic fables, they celebrate the rites of innocence before Vatican II, the Bundy Act and Feminism...
...One woman poignantly confesses, "It was a bad mistake my coming here...
...After having defined criteria for the position, they recognized the need for bringing to campus an objective person, one particluarly sympathetic to the aims of Catholic education but free from the suspicion of invisible entanglements...
...If we white Christians who hold power in this land could love enfleshingly as we ought, if our eyes peered out from scarred black flesh at the contemporary retrenchment of white power, we could only with difficulty believe that the "goodly people" of white America are the pure of heart who will see God or that they are the hungerers and thirsters after justice who will know the plentitude of God's Kingdom...
...Among New Rochelle's present administrators are Katherine Henderson, Ph.D., Academic Dean, mother of three young children, and I I I ELEANOR .B...
...In the words of one New Rochelle alumna and senior administrator: "We no longer had to wait for Reverend Mother to make up her mind...
...Indeed, most laywomen faculty express gratitude for the professional support of a religious mentor and value private friendships...
...On another campus, a professor who understands curriculum but has no ambitions for administration, refers to "convent politics...
...He who wills the end of justice must will the means necessary to that end...
...Emmanuel :'offers its students a unique opportunity to explore the role of women in society...
...But I am not calling my colleagues to caucus...
...No doubt he asked himself, in his final days of hiding, if anyone cared anymore, or even remembered him...
...Seton Hill is a "place where women lead...
...If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Allan Bakke, justice will not have been served--however the "majestic generalities" of the Constitution are twisted to make the point...
...Certainly religious faculty contribute financially in a way others don't, but the monetary is only one segment of a college," cautions Susan Rink, BVM...
...Before my visit I provided sample questions...
...The by-laws of Alverno College express careful guidelines, on the other hand, for a future presidential search without implying or assuming a School Sister of St...
...in-house or national...
...Although the organization of the Board of Trustees and the Board of Corporators approaches the avant-garde, so far as the lay faculty is concerned the decision-making process is wrapped in mystique because it has not been codified for public explanation...
...I am loath even to suggest that values of Sister faculty are superior to laywomen faculty...
...Academic laywomen label themselves, then, as anywhere between "presidential candidates" to "loyal retainers...
...It is the visible totem of historically complex political relationships among women of genius, assertiveness, and vision who have lived and died in convents...
...In an effort to discover just what options are open to academic laywomen in women's Catholic colleges and how aware women are of these options, I wrote to the presidents of the previously listed colleges requesting interviews with them and also with three laywomen professors whose leadership is recognized on campus...
...At the end of two separate interviews, for example, young women who were positive about their colleges, asked why I thought they had been selected by their respective presidents...
...Professors who have been frosted by experiences described earlier cherish their unhampered freedom, nonetheless, to develop curriculum and expand programs...
...Yet baffling contradictions exist at Carlow...
...Only when that complex story is told and analyzed will it finally be clear why the role of the laywomen academic so fluctuates in parallel institutions...
...Laywomen professors with whom I spoke at CNR express incredulity that "convent politics" could possibly touch their professional lives...
...They simply have the space to make free and informed decisions about their futures...
...Of the 35 laywomen whom I interviewed, ten of them are graduates who have returned to their campuses...
...Her goal will change only if she grows more disenchanted with the less than academic demands now placed upon college presidents...
...I don't know the process, but I sense 'big decisions' are made out of the convent with consultation with board of trustees and our academic administration...
...A handful of Weather people had surrendered in the last few months, and others, furious at the defectors, were still underground, determined to go on fighting, as they used to say, in the belly of the monster...
...Until the psychodynamics of the sponsoring religious community is exposed, probed, and written, no one can possibly understand how Sisters of the past (and present) were (and are) anointed college presidents and deans, and why other talented Sisters were (and are) screened out for such positions...
...If six strong applicants emerged, among them being one well-qualified SSND, Sister Kathleen comments, "All other things being equal (which they never are), it certainly would be to our advantage to have an SSND simply because it would be mean $23,000 contributed services instead of paying a $26,000 salary to the person...
...I am encouraging, however, the concept that women's Catholic colleges should share their strengths and emerge from isolationism with each other...
...A laywoman began as academic dean at Emmanuel College, June 1, 1977...
...Veto power over basic decisions, such as sale of land or the liquidation of the College, is also held by the Members of the Corporation...
...Sameness does not dilute their uniqueness...
...Posing the hypothetical situation of a vacancy in the Office of academic dean, Sister Kathleen claims she would form a search committee and invite applications from within and without the College...
...Impressed with Sylvia Murn's creative research, Sister Joel hired her to work with a professional consultant to start an Office of Development...
...He who wants justice without sacrifice does not love justice at all...
...How can you stand it, then...
...What are the options, indeed, for laywomen on the faculties of women's Catholic colleges...
...Joan Bristol, Dean of Students, mother of one child and expecting another...
...Choosing words carefully, she analyzes: "I sense that our administrative structure, i.e., not only the offices themselves but the process by which administrative decisions are made, definitely favors religious, thus preventing me from ever being a dean...
...Mary Schmidt, S.C., retired President of Seton Hill College (Greensburg, Pa., 1918), charmingly dismisses their charter changes in 1969 as the alteration of a few words competently handled by a local attorney...
...We should share experiences and expertise in positive ways with professorial exchanges, seminars, faculty and student internships...
...Whether or not the various by-laws allow a laywoman to be appointed president, provost, or academic dean is not the important criterion by which faculty define an "open" or "closed" system...
...Theresa, the Ursuline community which lives on the same campus, C/fiR receives from it an annual but modest financial gift of about $15,000...
...It is the rare laywoman, nonetheless, who feels herself trusted by religious colleagues 14 October 1977:656 to the point of experiencing deep community...
...I work with that system as best I can...
...Although a single model does not exist for the structure of the women's Catholic college, their distinctions on the continuum are often very close...
...He needn't have worried...
...A deep conviction shared by many of them, in fact, is that academic officers should be women religious, thus assuring the character of Christian values and the representation of the Catholic image...
...Trinity College, federally chartered, exists a s a corporation separate from the religious congregation...
...The academic dean at Seton Hill at that time, Jacinta Mann, S.C., describes the transition as "tense...
...The successor to Sister Mary Schmidt, Eileen Farrell, former Director of Personnel Administration at Hofstra University, became the first laywoman President of Seton Hill College, June 1, 1977...
...I can no longer...
...Fears are stimulated from a tight financial situation, which we are now coming out of...
...My observations reveal a flow of experiences difficult to crystallize into hardened polarities and either/or categories...
...Ultimate power to liquidate the College, of course, is with the Board of Corporators...
...Only at Marymount-Manhattan was it impossible to cross a bevy of secretaries to schedule an appointment with Colette Mahoney, RHSM, the only president who did not respond to my letter...
...It was time that we had met...
...But that recognition would never in any way permit me or encourage me to select somebody not competent for the job...
...yet uniqueness does not diminish the sameness of their shared experiences...
...There was quite a crowd to greet him at the Manhattan Criminal Court building on Wednesday morning, September 14...
...Co-sponsored by Chatham and the Higher Education Resource Service (HERS), Mid-Atlantic, the conference proposed to provide participants---academic women from every type 14 October 1977:652 of college and university in our region--with usable skills and strategies for altering their professional situations, if they so desired...
...The apprehensions of faculty are best admitted and expressed by Frances McCarthy, SND, former professor of German at Trinity College, who begins her third year as President of Emmanuel College: "I am realizing recently a kind of latent fear which I never expected to find among lay faculty...
...Voluntary programs to help blacks or other systematically excluded groups will not turn the tide of discrimination...
...The 23-member Board of Trustees of the College of Notre Dame is composed of 15 lay members and eight School Sisters of Notre Dame, and is chaired by the provincial leader of the religious congregation...
...Such generosity would startle professors elsewhere who claim to have witnessed miracles of money created for the academic aspirations and workshop wunderlust of religious faculty when the coffers are otherwise bare...
...An elaborate search committee, working for a year under Claire Lang, Ph.D., Chair of Sociology, recommended Mary Ann T. Burns, Ph.D., former Academic Dean at Wilson College...
...Interviewing at the various colleges, I was startled at the complete willingness of all the women to contribute to my project...
...When I got there a little after nine I found an astonishing crowd around the entrance to the Manhattan District Attorney's office at 155 Leonard Street...
...Never having operated.a search 14 October 1977:654 committee, Sister Kathleen admits the possibility of forming one when the occasion demands...
...At the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (1895), governance seems to rest firmly in the hands of the President...
...The good-hearted discrimination of the "Living Family Allowance" won the favor of the Ford Foundation...
...Further research is required, of course, to validate my personal findings...
...The future of the women's Catholic college is too critical for us not to be learning more practicaliy from each other...
...I have had nothing but appreciation and positive reenforcement, but it's like staying too long within family...
...They enjoy no more than what the rhetoric of the women's Catholic college promises to the women students whom these women professors teach...
...While the spirit of Vatican II inspired religious communities to evalute the expression of their apostolic commitments, the burgeoning of federal financing baited them to dispel the clouds of ownership blanketCommonweal: 653 ing their affiliated colleges...
...in American literature, accustomed to chasing white whales and tolerating ambiguity, come to arm myself with an inscrutably tangled tape in order to preserve the words of laywomen faculty and religious presidents of women's Catholic colleges...
...Two faeulty members from the search committee which recommended the appointment of Eileen Farrell as President of Seton Hill offer important insights...
...Specifics The by-laws of Mundelein College (Chicago, 1930), which were changed two years ago, entrust ownership to the Board of Trustees and no longer stipulate that the College president must be a Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary...
...i i i i i f i i AN ACADEMIC PROFILE ELEANOR B. WYMARD Laywomen in women's C tholic colleges Not too early in the history of the College of New Rochelle, one of the first women's Catholic colleges in the United States (1904), a young woman instructormif married and pregnantmknew not to expect the renewal of her teaching contract...
...Only in convents have strategies been so sharpened to discover and develop feminine talent...
...Lay faculty fear that the Sisters have more power than we ever could be able to exercise because of the checks and balances of the College governing structure...
...Frequently, I ferreted out other stimulating faculty women, and the presidents often arranged for me to meet interested administrators and staff...
...Unfortunately, I have no reaction from laywomen faculty to this policy because of my canceled visit...
...A college cannot have a kind of twofold existence," she contends...
...Men faculty who were heads of households received beyond their salaries, however, an annual $400 bonus for each child...
...Shortly after Sister Mary Sehmidt became President of Seton Hill in 1971, during the worst of financial times, the faculty appreciated her request for letter-ballots before appointing Colette Toler, S.C., as Academic Dean...
...Within a more closed structure, the self-expression of Tina Stretch would be interpreted, I suspect, as a Faustian thirst...
...Different from the Alverno model, however, the President of the College chairs, ex officio, the meetings of the Members of the Corporation, who also are charged with electing all persons to the Board of Trustees...
...Some colleges mail the monthly checks directly to the congregation and receive a yearly percentage or gift...
...Again, the pinch...
...Citing New Rochelle's "special leadership . . . in improving faculty status and compensation of college teachers," the Foundation granted the College $395,000, July 1, 1956, to be distributed over three years...
...My own experience defined only a paucity of choices...
...All of the presidents spoke openly and warmly with me...
...Do the women who teach the "women of all ages" think about their own options...
...Commonweal: 655 The problem of upward mobility for academic laywomen is cluttered, too, by the reality of financial constraints...
...Five years ago, a senior project by a continuing-education student at Alverno caught the eye of Sister Joel Read...
...Eileen Farrell is, however, an alumna, class of '46...
...By dissolving the College Corporators, the Sisters of Charity were nominally conceding final control...
...on other campuses, paper salaries are returned directly to the college, with religious faculty receiving small stipends...
...Members of the order are urged to apply for middle administrative posts, but lay faculty and administrators, Sister Ann perceives, have no fear about their positions being usurped...
...Similar search committees function at Trinity, Rosemont and Emmanuel where they focus, however, on the appropriate religious congregations because their by-laws stipulate that presidents must be members of the sponsoring religious community...
...Even if faculty verbally fumble at disentangling such structures, the career aspirations of academic laywomen are ultimately influenced by them...
...From Alverno College, Lucy Cromwell, Chair, English Department, speaks for the majority of my interviews by stressing the opportunities she has had to develop professionally because her abilities are taken seriously and often prematurely challenged...
...But the important irony about the Ford Foundation grant is more profound than obvious...
...Mark Rudd came home a few weeks ago, back from a seven-year tour of parts unknown...
...I interviewed nine college presidents and 35 laywomen, including 25 professors, one academic dean, two deans of students and seven staff administrators...
...This is the bedrock of their lives...
...Financial constraints stimulate fear among all faculty, and laywomen professors are sensitive t o its effect on upward mobility and scholarly fulfillment...
...Sister Ann Marie Durst, SHCJ, affirms there is no reluctance from the Society of the Holy Child Jesus to encourage women lay faculty to assume administrative roles at Rosemont College (Rosement, Pa., 1922) when talent or interest have not been generated within the religious community...
...Mercy, Pittsburgh, 1929), but Jane Scully, RSM, beginning her eleventh year as President, pledges that unwritten policies about the selection of administrative officers will be clarified before she leaves office...
...The Search Process Searches may be elaborate or simple...
...These colleges exist on a continuum from the classic to the independent...
...The capital gift was the beginning of New RocheUe's $1,200,000 endowment which encouraged financial independence...
...WYMARD, a previous contributor to Commonweal, is an associate pro/essor in the English department o/'Carlow College in Pittsburgh, Pa...
...It is common parlance that the social revolutions of the sixties profoundly influenced the world of higher education, but women's Catholic colleges were affected doubly by the decisions of Church and State...
...Rosemont confirms the need for "educated Catholic women '.to meet the wants of the age.'" Carlow respects "a woman [as] more than a grownup girl...
...The issue of the laywomen professor and upward mobility has generally been raised in a framework of patriarchy...
...My interviews convinced me that future research on the woman academic cannot be careless of her experience on the campuses of women's Catholic colleges...
...A very practical concern for me is that few BVMs are pursuing Ph.Ds for careers in . higher education...
...Reporters do a lot of things, but what they do most is stand around and wait...
...Because of that, indifference on the Bakke case is damning...
...Laywomen professors who have earnestly admitted to me their thwarted options to be academic deans continue to teach on the ,same campuses with resignation, although my suspicion is that the very angry ones have grown weary and left...
...These promising professors perceived themselves blessed by a small group of creative, scholarly Sisters, who, in many small ways, were somehow (secretly) forwarding their careers...
...Perhaps the best definition of an "open" system is implied in a remark by Rose Ann Fleming, SND, President of Trinity College (Washington, D.C., 1897...
...Carlow College is again an anomaly without the option of a rotating system...
...Word of his impending surrender first surfaced in Chicago the day before, then jumped in a microsecond to New York, where Rudd won the eye of the national press at Columbia University in 1968...
...The women's Catholic college is a microcosm for studying this phenomenon, but only the tip of the iceberg...
...The career aspirations of academic laywomen are compatible, nevertheless, with the role involvement permitted to them by the governance structure of the individual college...
...Mundelein "is convinced that every student's future as a woman should be taken seriously...
...The Corporation consists of Members (SSSFs) and Directors (the Board of Trustees...
...While stressing a deep commitment to the values of Catholic higher education, no one at Trinity presupposes that a gossamer trunk line needs to connect the president's office to reverend mother's parlor in order to ensure maintenance of the founders' goals...
...Many of them were courageous, indeed, in choosing the professors whom I would interview...
...Alverno is "for women--women of all ages...
...Carlow is an anomaly in my sampling of colleges...
...We should be trading our skills, Consciousness and knowledge in order to enrich the life of each campus...
...That a woman must come out for motherhood in order to be a dean, vintage 1977, at the College of New Rochelle, is not, however, the point to anticipate...
...Space for Decisions To imply from these interviews, however, that laywomen professors who teach within "open" structures aspire to be deans and/or presidents is absurd...
...Existing as a corporation separate from the Convent of St...
...Contracts were not renewed for five untenured faculty, but two of them were Ursuline Sisters...
...Laywomen on their faculties, moreover, have strong convictions about possibilities for leadership and self-expression, as well as opportunities for academic growth...
...To frame a response, I decided to seek the perceptions of colleagues representing a sampling of women's Catholic colleges from Boston to Milwaukee...
...Search committees for major administrative positions have not operated, however, at Cadow College (formerly Mt...
...The laywomen faculty and administrators with whom I spoke agree that hidden agendas are not suspected .to exist between congregation and campus...
...Patterns emerge in their responses, dependent upon how the professor perceives her college in the continuum from classic to independent...
...When Ann Ida Gannon, BVM, the well-known President of Mundelein College, retired two years ago, an elected committee which represented all of the constituents, advertised nationally, received over 150 applications, and discovered Susan Rink, BVM, then Academic Dean...
...Then the pinch...
...When applied to academic laywomen teaching in women's Catholic colleges, a crucial statement from the working papers struck me as presumptuous: "We are employed by institutions and function within a number of sub-units within those institutions---departments, committees, task forces . . . . If we are to make the most of our time, energy and training, we must be aware of these structural demands and of the options open to us...
...Your subject is complex enough without adding variables," Sister Ann Marie admitted in a lengthy phone conversation...
Vol. 104 • October 1977 • No. 21
