Mundelein Voices: The Women's College Experience (1930-1991)

Contents

Preface

ix

Carolyn Farrell, B.V.M.

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

xiii Part I

Creating a College: The Foundation of Mundelein, 1929–1931

3

Mary DeCock, B.V.M.

The Mundelein Skyscraper: Building Space for Women

30

Prudence A. Moylan Part II

Memories of Mundelein, 1933–1937

55

Jane Malkemus Goodnow

O This Learning, What a Thing It Is! Remembering Sister Mary Leola Oliver, B.V.M.

68

Mercedes McCambridge

Life Flows through the Dream

75

Blanche Marie Gallagher, B.V.M.

A Tale of Two Mundeleins, 1947–1951

92

Mary Alma Sullivan, B.V.M.

Working with the People: The Religious Studies Department, 1957–1991

106

Carol Frances Jegen, B.V.M.

A Class Apart: B.V.M. Sister Students at Mundelein College, 1957–1971

123

Ann M. Harrington, B.V.M.

A New Dean Sweeps Clean, or Adventures with the Academic Dean Gloria Callaci

144

Remembering 1962–1969

153

Joan Frances Crowley, B.V.M.

The Golden Age of Mundelein College: A Memoir, 1962–1969

181

Norbert Hruby

The Progressive Bunch, 1969–1979: An Interview with David Orr

189

Elizabeth Fraterrigo

“Damned Average Raisers”: The Continuing Education Program

204

Marianne M. Littau

The Joy of Learning, 1987–1994

210

Tomi Shimojima

Reinventing Mundelein: Birthing the Weekend College, 1974

215

Mary Griffin

The College on the Curve, 1967–1997

225

Michael Fortune

Mundelein College: Catholic Substance, Ecumenical Ethos, 1976–1991

238

Stephen A. Schmidt

Reminiscences of a Mundelein Junkie

254

David Block

Moving West of Raynor, or “What’s a Good Lutheran Girl Like You Doing at a Catholic Graduate School Like This?” 1985–1990

261

Nancy Bartels

Mundelein College Baccalaureate Address, June 9, 1991

282

Mary Griffin

Afterword

286

Mary Nowesnick

Contributors

288

Mundelein College Timeline

292

Index

295

Part One

Creating a College: The Foundation of Mundelein, 1929–1931 Mary DeCock, B.V.M. The date was June 3, 1931. At the corner of Granville and Sheridan, six handsome Chicago policemen astride shiny new City of Chicago motorcycles redirected Sheridan Road traffic westward as they waited to begin their task of formal escort.1 Just past the Sheridan Road curve, 384 students and 54 faculty formed a guard of honor up to the front entrance of Mundelein College, where the unflappable Sister Mary Justitia Coffey, B.V.M., waited in smiling anticipation for the motorcade to arrive. Cardinal George Mundelein was coming to formally dedicate the new skyscraper college for women that bore his name.

By tomorrow morning, Sister Mary Justitia knew, Chicago papers would once more detail another Mundelein College first—the completion of one breathless, astonishing, dramatic year of academic pursuit in a building of landmark proportions that in the teeth of the deepening economic depression flashed all the external symbols of its staggering $2-million (mortgaged to the hilt) price tag.

Led by the all-girl uniformed bands of the St. Mary’s and Immaculata B.V.M. High Schools, together with a colorful contingent of uniformed Catholic laymen—the Knights of St. Gregory—the cardinal would enter the Mundelein auditorium. There, he would address one of his most devoted constituencies and hear a masterful recital on the Kilgen liturgical organ, which still bears a plaque identifying it as his gift to the college. From there, he would work his way up to the fourteenth floor, blessing each classroom and lab as well as the sisters’ living quarters, before returning to the main-floor, red-leathered Cardinal’s Room for a brief reception.

In all, it was a spectacular conclusion to nineteen months’ labor of astonishing proportions on physical, psychological, intellectual, spiritual, and financial fronts. If this all sounds inflated and a bit self-congratulatory, I thought so, too, until I researched this article. Now, I believe that the appearance of Mundelein College on the Chicago educational scene was at least a small miracle given the financial constraints of the depression, the principled idealism of the largely self-educated foundresses, the seemingly inexhaustible energies of the first religious and lay faculty, and the amazing support of the

— —

Mary DeCock, B.V.M.

B.V.M. congregation and of the sisters, pastors, students, and parents of the twenty-eight B.V.M.–run schools in the Chicago area.

So, in this essay, I will attempt to tell the story of the foundation of Mundelein College with fresh detail and perhaps fewer adjectives than heretofore. This will include negotiations between the B.V.M. congregation and Cardinal Mundelein that preceded the opening of the college, the acquisition and financing of the land on which the college was built, a brief description of the skyscraper building that housed the college, the education of sisters to teach and administer the college, the response of the first student body, and the overall coordination of these events by two remarkable women, Sister Mary Justitia Coffey and Mother Mary Isabella Kane, who saw their labors primarily as fulfilling the will of God and of Cardinal Mundelein.

Whether you call it a dream deferred or a series of false starts, the foundation of Mundelein College was a long time coming. The dream had to do with satisfying the need of the rapidly growing order of B.V.M. sisters to provide college educations for its members. The false starts represent the several times different B.V.M. leaders attempted to negotiate such an educational site in Chicago or Milwaukee. In some ways, the problem was the fruit of the sisterhood’s own success. For the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought the congregation an annual rush of new members—graduates of the many parish elementary schools in Chicago or of St. Mary’s High School on the city’s West Side. The sheer number of applicants quickly outpaced the ability of Mt. St. Joseph, the B.V.M. college in Dubuque, to accommodate them for summer study—the sisters’ standard time for taking courses leading to a college degree.

But the real problem was traditional church law that hampered all orders of women religious. Women could not enroll in Catholic colleges run by and for men. Male members of religious orders could not teach members of the opposite sex in their classrooms. Sisters could not take classes from Catholic laymen. But—catch-22—pastors were advised to see that their parish schools were staffed by qualified teachers, and religious orders who staffed parish schools were obliged to establish teacher-training programs or normal schools that would ensure adequate preparation of sisters and brothers who taught the children. The sisters’ solution to this problem was to set up their own institutes or houses of studies and engage qualified teachers to bring the classes to them.2 Meanwhile, state certification boards tightened accredita-

Creating a College: The Foundation of Mundelein, 1929–1931

tion laws for public school teachers and threatened to extend their reach into parochial schools.

Between 1903 and 1929, three mothers general attempted to open houses of studies in Chicago, but their plans collapsed for various economic and political reasons: the money was urgently needed elsewhere, the Dubuque archbishop demanded their investments in Mt. St. Joseph, the opening of a sisters’ college in connection with DePaul or Marquette looked promising but met with various types of resistance, the different geographical interests represented by voting members of the Mother General’s Council outnumbered those from Chicago and put expansion plans there on hold. Meanwhile, sisters created their own alternative ways of self-education. They honed their teaching skills under master teachers, created their own workshops and exten­ sion courses, and sometimes enrolled at state universities and land-grant colleges to get the necessary degrees.3 It was against this background that three B.V.M.’s, Mother Mary Cecilia Dougherty (superior general of the order), Sister Mary Isabella Kane (provincial superior for the Chicago area), and Sister Mary Lambertina Doran (principal of St. Pius Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side), arranged a “courtesy call” to the newly appointed prelate of Chicago, George William Mundelein.4 The date was February 22, 1916, a mere two weeks after his inauguration as the archbishop of Chicago. Behind their courtesy was a very practical matter. At the suggestion of the bishop of Dubuque, they wished to solicit Mundelein’s assistance in obtaining from Rome permission to sell a piece of property in Chicago. The proceeds would give them funds to open a longdesired house of studies where sisters could make retreats and live while taking summer-school classes through DePaul and Loyola. To make the enter­ prise self-supporting, they hoped to use it during the year for educating some fourth-year high school students and perhaps a few college students—a small and affordable beginning for serving their many missions in the diocese.

The new archbishop’s enthusiastic response broadened their modest horizons. Not only would he grant the permission, his agent in Rome would assist in obtaining it. Then he unveiled to them his cherished plan of creating a Catholic University of the West, a coalition of existing Chicago-area universities and colleges, supplemented by three colleges for women—one each on the north, west, and south sides of the city. The heart of this joint enterprise would be the diocesan seminary Mundelein planned to develop. He would authorize the sisters to borrow money to finance one of these colleges, visit

Mary DeCock, B.V.M.

the site that they selected for the building, and send priests from the seminary to assist them with lectures and classes. Because he liked a bit of competition among religious orders, he planned to recruit other orders of sisters for the other women’s colleges.

According to Sister Mary Isabella’s notes on the meeting, the discussion then turned to the advantages of not “thinking small” and of the need for much work and prepublicity to recruit students for a venture of such magnitude.

The meeting ended with Mother Cecilia’s agreement to return to Dubuque, where she would communicate the new opportunity to her councilors for their approval before she wrote to Rome for the permission to sell. The letter to Rome was drafted, but Mother Cecilia’s efforts to solicit cooperation from her councilors did not succeed. On May 15 she wrote to Archbishop Mundelein expressing regret that the congregation was not able to finance a college in Chicago at that time. His response also expressed regret as well as hope for future funding by a wealthy benefactor.

The B.V.M. board of directors was only the first of many obstacles Archbishop Mundelein met in attempting to create his Catholic University of the West. The Jesuits at Loyola University and the Vincentians at DePaul University refused to yield their autonomy to Mundelein’s new diocesan seminary, St. Mary of the Lake. The Dominican

Mother Mary Isabella Kane, B.V.M., superior general of Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Dubuque, Iowa.

W o m e n ’s s t u d i e s / c h i c a g o h i s t o ry / r e l i g i o n

Edited by Ann M. Harrington and Prudence Moylan

$16.95 U.S.

of education, innovation, and leadership.

“Catholic women’s colleges have a story worth telling. Fortunately a group of faculty and alums of Mundelein College in Chicago have realized this. They have produced a lively collection of autobiographical essays that capture the meaning and memory of these institutions for women in the Catholic Church and American society.”

Harrington M oy l a n

Mundelein Voices—celebrating a rich history

The Women’s College Experience, 1930–1991

— R osemary R adford R uether , Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology, Garrett Theological Seminary and Northwestern University

Ann M. Harrington, B.V.M., an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, teaches courses in Japanese history and the history of Asian women. She graduated from Mundelein College and later returned to teach French and history.

Among her publications is Japan’s Hidden Christians. Her current research focuses on the work of the first Roman Catholic women religious in Japan.

Prudence Moylan, a Mundelein alumna and member of the Mundelein history department from 1966 to 1991, is a professor of history at Loyola University Chicago. Her current scholarly interests are feminist teaching and the gendered aspects of the peace movement in Britain in the twentieth century. She is the author of “Sophia and Sophistry: Gender and Western Civilization” in Meeting the Challenge: Innovative Feminist Pedagogies in Action, edited by Maralee Mayberry and Ellen Cronan Rose (Routledge, 1999).

“Ann Harrington and Prudence Moylan have done a masterful job of bringing together highlights of the college’s history in informative, humorous, and reverent scenarios that will jog the memory of anyone who had the good fortune to be part of the Mundelein community. This book is an important contribution to the history of women religious and of Catholic higher education in the twentieth century.”

—M arilou E ldred , president, Saint Mary’s College

O

riginally conceived of as a teacher-training center for members of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (B.V.M.’s), Mundelein College soon became, after its founding in 1930, one of the premiere women’s colleges in the United States. The college’s commitment to rigorous education and to social justice enabled generations of alumnae to serve as leaders in all sections of society.

Among the essays in this collection are a fascinating account of the politics of founding a women’s college during the depths of the Great Depression, descriptions of what the Mundelein experience was like for the sister students, and personal perspectives on weathering the tumultuous 1960s and on the somber last days of the institution before its acquisition by Loyola University Chicago in 1991. Written by alumnae and faculty, these autobiographical essays reflect the vibrant spirit of Mundelein and serve as an elegiac tribute to a much-loved institution.

ISBN 0-8294-1692-7

Mundelein Voices

The Skyscraper is a national landmark that honors the rich history of the women who lived and worked at Mundelein College.

Mundelein Voices

“Each woman has her own Mundelein story, her own memory of a college experience alive in her heart. These stories renew memories and strengthen values. And they carry the spirit of Mundelein into the twenty-first century.”

— Carolyn Farrell, B.V.M., associate vice president, Loyola University Chicago

“Readers will be excited and deeply moved by the voices so vividly captured in these pages. This impressive effort distills the essence of Mundelein and the Skyscraper, one of the country’s top Catholic women’s colleges and home for six decades to a vibrant intellectual community of faculty and students and now the site of the Ann Ida Gannon, B.V.M., Center for Women and Leadership.”

— K aren K ennelly , Conference on the History of Women Religious

This book is ideal for those interested in: ■

W omen ’ s

■

H igher

■

C hicago

■

A rchitecture

■

A merican

history

■

C atholic

education

studies

education history