Letter from President Towey
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President Towey leading AMU students at one of his fall Bible Study groups
features of the new Prince building that will enrich Ave’s academic and cultural life for generations to come. At the building’s dedication ceremony, I quoted from the homily of His Holiness Pope Francis on Pentecost Sunday, and how when the Holy Spirit blows and we raise our sails, God can work wonders. It is fair to say that as we begin our 15th year as a mission of the Church in higher education, Ave Maria University is one such wonder. Pope Francis also described how the Holy Spirit “inspires wholehearted generosity.” How true that is! Think about it. The new Prince building was fully paid for by individuals who didn’t attend this University. We have had the good fortune of being adopted as the “honorary alma mater” of so many. Selby and Tom, and
thousands of donors great and small, have followed in our founder Tom Monaghan’s footsteps and shared their resources so that students could access and afford an AMU education. Please enjoy this new edition of our magazine, and come and visit us and see what Scripture describes as “the evidence of God’s favor” that is Ave Maria University.
Kind regards,
Jim Towey Ave Maria University President
ave ma r ia maga z i ne | ave ma r ia.edu
hen I first saw the beautiful mosaic mural of the great saints John Paul the Great and Mother Teresa of Calcutta on our campus, I was reminded of the iconic “Touchdown Jesus” on the Hesburgh Library of the University of Notre Dame. This thought wasn’t about a critical comparison of the aesthetic appeal of the two (for the record, I like ours better, but in fairness to the Fighting Irish, theirs went up in the mid-sixties during a time of cultural upheaval). It was how our image of these two great saints dramatically expresses who we are at Ave Maria University, and underscores their influence on the academic and cultural experience unique to our campus. This issue of the AMU magazine introduces you to so much that is new at Ave, including the “JPII Lead” program as well as recent missions of the Mother Teresa Project. These two saints’ writings permeate so many aspects of campus life, including our curriculum. No Catholic university in America is more closely aligned to the teachings and inspiration of John Paul II and Mother Teresa. This should surprise no one, for they both had a deep devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and our patroness. We are proud of this identification and claim for ourselves the right to be called Our Lady’s University. With another year of growing enrollment and our largest entering class ever, Ave Maria is thriving. You will read in these pages about our emergent nursing and exercise physiology majors and the state-of-the-art labs now available to support instruction. You’ll also read about
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