Donna Carroll, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, is on a campaign to spread hope to Catholic colleges and universities amid troubling times.
“Right now, our country is faced with uncertainty and polarizing dissent,” she said in a Feb. 27 talk at Marymount University in Arlington to Catholic educators and administrators. “Our Catholic practice is to remain well-informed and to bring the best of our interdisciplinary thinking to these challenging moments, keeping our focus on our primary task, which is mission-centered teaching and learning.”
Watch Donna Carroll’s Conversation at Marymount
Addressing a group of 30 Catholic educators and administrators, Carroll gave a few statistics on the impact of Catholic higher education. Today in the United States, there are more than 200 degree-granting Catholic colleges and universities sponsored by 46 religious congregations, of which 25 sponsor more than one institution, she said.
“We educate close to three-quarters of a million students,” she added. “We have the highest graduation rate of any single sector, higher than all the public universities, higher than all the private schools collectively.”
With a higher graduation rate comes greater expenses, Carroll said. “We’re not without constraints, however, and I often say that our mission is our greatest strength and vulnerability. Access is our DNA, which often equates with tight budgets.”
She told administrators that a vibrant Catholic education utilizes “faith and dialogue with contemporary issues, and on occasion, we find ourselves in creative tension with church teaching, which is okay. In fact, it’s healthy.”
While a healthy tension is necessary for a full understanding of the faith, remaining rooted in Catholic teaching is a must for institutions, she added. “We need to strengthen our understanding of and our support for the role of the humanities and theology,” she said. “We have to support new models of sponsorship that preserve and strengthen Catholic identity.”
At Catholic colleges and universities, Carroll reminded the audience, “the academy is not the church. We are an educational ministry of the church, ‘ex corde ecclesia’ (or) ‘from the heart of the church,’ but our purpose is different, distinct though interdependent.”
The Catholic Church’s teachings “are not trendy,” she added. “They’ve been around as long as we’ve been around. Rather, they’re really fundamental to who we are as Catholics.”
Consequently, in the day-to-day maintenance of higher education, choose your battles wisely, Carroll advised. “Put aside campus differences and work together. You know, under a lot of stress, we see tensions. Those are small tensions we need to put aside and focus on our core work.”
Carroll had a message for Marymount, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year: “Don’t take the Catholic identity of Marymount for granted, whether this is your religious tradition or not, whether you chose Marymount for its mission or convenience.”
Carroll and Marymount President Irma Becerra then took questions from the audience. Joseph Vorbach, diocesan superintendent of schools, thanked Carroll for her insights, then asked, “Since I come from a K-12 Catholic education perspective, what can and should or might we be doing more of to collaborate in the service of Catholic higher education?”
Carroll encouraged Vorbach and other administrators to strengthen the connections between Catholic high schools and universities. Becerra agreed, adding that throughout her career, she observed parents sending their children to Catholic elementary and high schools, but later sending their children to public colleges and universities. She said that while both private Catholic and public institutions provide students with a good education, students may miss some of the perks that they received in Catholic schools.
“I think a lot of the time, parents are just looking at a little bit of (commoditization) in terms of the less expensive solution. And you end up comparing apples and oranges,” she said.
The path to Catholic higher education begins on the local level, Carroll said. “I will welcome more of our collaboration, not only with high schools, but also with our parishes.”
Read the original article on the Arlington Catholic Herald’s website.
