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DECEMBER 2005

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.#

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