College Presidents Series:
Dr. Stephen
J. Sweeny,College of New Rochelle
Devoted
to Soli Deo Gloria (glory
to God alone) and Liberal Education
By Joan Baum,
Ph.D.
“You
work with your door open” and feel limitations, only
as these are “offered from above,” says Dr. Stephen
J. Sweeny, trying to explain some part of the passion and the
philosophy that have motivated him for over 30 years as an
administrator at the College of New Rochelle (CNR) and, for
the last 9 years, as its president, invited to serve by the
board of trustees, who dispensed with the usual search, and
then repeatedly asked to continue. With great modesty the president
expresses gratitude and quiet confidence at the opportunity
to lead the CNR community, sensitive to the values and needs
of a being at the helm of a 102-year-old Catholic woman’s
college and its more recent co-ed graduate and professional
schools.
He likes to think that “we’re not getting older, we’re
just getting better,” but in conversation, it becomes
apparent that much that motivated Dr. Sweeny to seek out
the CNR in the first place still holds true today—a
belief in the merit of a Catholic liberal arts education
and respect for the research that has indicated leadership
advantages for women who attend single-sex undergraduate
schools—his own daughter’s experience. A disproportionate
number of congresswomen, he points out, come from women’s
colleges, and women students report a greater ease and opportunity
studying with their own. But Dr. Sweeny is quick to point
out, as well, that though women constitute 70 percent of
the faculty at CNR, men have always been welcome as administrators.
What is more, the college, owing its origin to the spirit
of the Ursuline order, asks for no religious tests. Its faith-based
mission is inclusive, the president remarks and welcomes “diversity” in
all its forms—age, ethnicity, socio-economic status,
interests.
Dr.
Sweeny, who holds a doctorate in higher education, has a
bachelor’s
degree in Spanish from Catholic University in Washington. Considering
demographics, what could be more timely! The country’s
Catholic population is projected to be, possibly by 2012, certainly
by 2015, he notes, over 50 percent Hispanic. This projection
gives CNR a kind of heads up in recruitment because it has
not only a lovely upstate campus but five branch campuses in
New York City—Co-op City, 149th Street in
the South Bronx, 125th Street in Harlem, the Lower West Side,
and Bed Sty Plaza in Brooklyn. These are no foster children,
however, for each campus, while providing solid liberal arts
undergraduate education along with “access,” holds
to a consistent liberal arts curriculum. Indeed, the president
prides himself on uniformity of standards and programs at all
the campuses, noting that CNR’s unusually low student-faculty
ratio (10 to 1) and commitment to methodologies reportedly
favored by women—seminars, collaborative learning models,
curricula that contain themes of special interest to women—has
made the college especially attractive to older women who help
swell the ranks of the more popular offerings, including psychology,
the arts, and education.
The
challenge and so far the accomplishment, Dr. Sweeny adds,
has been CNR’s
success at having over 50 percent of its graduates go on for
further study. It is his hope that the number of those who
seek out CNR for continuing education will grow, once the college’s
$25 million Wellness Center is complete. It is one of CNR’s
distinctive features, he points out, that where other institutions
have disbanded with physical education, CNR requires students
to take up four (noncredit) courses. And it is his pride that
most CNR students opt to take more, aware of the nation’s
and their own growing health needs, and of the connectedness
of mind and body, here augmented by spirit.#
