Saying Goodbye to a Revered Place of Learning

Goodbyes are never easy. We all know this because we all experience goodbyes throughout life. I’ve been pondering a coming goodbye in my life, one of a treasured place of higher learning that sent me into the world with a youthful eagerness to apply what I learned but also to enlarge that learning constantly for the rest of my life. Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan is closing its doors after this coming school year. Founded by the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 1919 as St. Joseph’s College for Women, (the name was changed in 1939) it was one of the first institutions to provide an education for women who were closed out of colleges, small and large, enrolling only men at the time. Forget about the Ivies: they catered to rich men and a few, not-so-rich were lucky enough to earn a coveted scholarship. All around the country, women’s colleges were founded in the late nineteenth into the early twentieth centuries mostly founded by women educators and nuns. They saw that women were needed in medical professions, so they started nursing degree programs and swerved into laboratory science for research, some becoming well-known scientists in biology, chemistry, and physics. Many of these colleges offered majors in education, especially elementary education, something the men’s colleges did not include. It is not a stretch to think that women’s colleges developed the American system of education from elementary to college. 

I was the first in my community to be sent away for a fulltime education in a stellar women’s college. The evening I arrived at Siena Heights, another fellow community member, Sr. Mary Philip Macey, and I perused Sacred Heart Hall at Adrian. We wanted to find where our classes met the next morning. I remember that we whispered as we walked the halls, as if we were in church because in our minds, we were; this was a sacred place. We were given full scholarships to attend Siena because the Dominican Sisters had heard we were a young community, without much capital, looking to build a high school outside Cleveland, Ohio. The Dominicans, who staffed Hoban Dominican High School in Cleveland stepped up and said they would help. Thus, I was offered a full scholarship and Sr. Philip, who already had a bachelor’s degree, was offered a scholarship to finish a certificate in counseling. I spent three glorious years on the campus.

All my professors were Dominican Sisters who were national leaders in science, art, education and more. There was Sister Ann Joachim, one of the first nun-attorneys in the country who taught history and asked me to help her organize her office. That insurmountable task was never finished! Sister Miriam Michael, a chemist, contributed to the national research on cancer and helped invent Preparation H! Sister Johannes Klemm was a recognized liturgical artist whose work adorned many churches, especially in Michigan and Ohio. I remember Sister Cyril Edwin, a large, taciturn woman, whose devotion to ancient Greek texts had us enchanted especially as she spoke, almost sotto voce, on the “Poetics,” of Aristotle, whom she let it be known, was ‘baptized’ by her Order’s great theologian, Thomas Aquinas, many centuries later. Her philosophy classes helped me years later as I pursued my doctorate in rhetoric. Then, there was Sr. Philip Ryan, the community’s raconteur, a distinguished writer herself, who commandeered me into every one of her writing and literature classes. Because of her, I received a grant to begin graduate studies in creative writing at Michigan State University.

There are more Sisters I could name if I had the space, but here they were–all in the universe of educators, experts in their disciplines who folded that knowledge into their love of God and helping us to see God’s love for us. But colleges and universities founded, owned, or sponsored by religious communities of women and men are sadly disappearing. There are many reasons for this fact, not the least of which is that today’s student wants the larger, public university experience, a fast track to athletic related careers, business, and technology for sure. Enrollment numbers in these institutions seem to imply that the desire for a more complete human adventure provided by liberal arts colleges and universities, especially if aligned with a faith dimension, is moribund at best. And so, many of us are saying our goodbyes.

Reflection

A place of learning is revered for its soul, purpose, and spirit. The soul is the friendships, memories, and love, strong and lasting as the mortar holding the structures together. The purpose is the education you took from that place that brought you to where you are today, far from the chalk dust, the cavernous hallways, the quiet corners of the library. But the spirit, ah the spirit, drifts all about your life, falls into your very being and warms you with the presence of God you came to know when you were at this place. The Irish have a phrase for this: The thin place.

That’s what a revered center of learning is and remains long after you have left it and it has been redefined. A thin place is the threshold or veil where the physical and spiritual meet. The physical might change but the spiritual continues to expand as the soul, purpose, and spirit of a revered house of learning continues to live in its graduates and staff. The Dominican charism and focus in life is Truth. It is the foundation and fruit of all their institutions both pastoral and educational. Every graduate of Siena Heights University in what will be its 107 years of existence, has been formed in the pursuit of Truth and this will not disappear so long as the charism lives—even beyond the school we loved. It is as St. Catherine of Siena wrote,

“That is what the Truth does: lifts and lets us fly.” 

Reflect on the schools or places of learning you once were part of and have closed or changed. How do you feel about this? Can you see an evolving purpose in the change that was part of your own growth while you studied there?

The best compliment you can give a revered place of learning is to live fully the education and spirituality you absorbed while there. What do you do daily that recalls these holy places in your life?