La Salle College High School
THE WISTERIAN Vol. LXXX VII No. 5| April 2022
DEIC CELEBRATES THE WOMEN PIONEERS AT LA SALLE Mrs. Julia Maher is one of fifteen women featured on La Salle’s Women in History exhibit, which celebrates Women’s History Month by detailing the achievements of La Salle’s female pioneers. The process began when Dr. Arellano, La Salle’s Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), posed the question to the DEI Council: Who were the first women to teach or work at La Salle in their respective fields? He felt a need to “highlight their identities and history. Their accomplishments, at times, are unnoticed. It is our duty, as a school community, to remember how they have founded, encouraged, and promoted many areas of school life.” Mr. O’Toole, former La Salle Principal and current teacher, took this prompt and ran with it. “I said [to Dr. Arellano], ‘Well, I would probably be your first resource since I probably worked with quite a few of them who were first because I’ve been here a long time and was a student here.” Answering this question required in-depth research and some deep digging into old files and yearbooks. “We had to establish their names, what they taught or where they work in an academic program, how long ago they started, and then we took the
research from there." Mr. O’Toole found a key partner to work with on this project. “Fortunately, I am married to an expert researcher. My wife, a former reference librarian at the university level, offered to help.” Mr. O’Toole and his wife, Mary Louise Castaldi, spent the next several weeks sending drafts to the Council and developing a list of fifteen women, with the list being limited to those from the Wyndmoor campus for historical unity. “Then, after all that, it needed to be put together in the display.” Ms. Castaldi was already very familiar with designing displays from her time working at the University of the Arts. The finished product is a celebration of the first women in their fields at La Salle. While Mrs. Maher’s impact is clear, every single one of these women left their own equally distinctive impact on La Salle. For instance, Mrs. Muriel Mehr, mother of four La Salle alums, was the first woman to both teach religion and be the chair of any department. She even created her own religion elective, Death and Dying. Mr. O’Toole explained, “Death and Dying was some research, reflection, prayer, [and] thought about the processes people go through when they are at
an advanced stage of disease. That is from a theological, philosophical, biological, and maybe even historical process.” The impact of women at La Salle is far from distant history, though. In fact, their impact has only grown as more and more women are incorporated into the faculty. “Over the past ten years, the number of women teaching at La Salle has increased. I think it’s now about 25%,” cited Mr. O’Toole. One of the women driving innovation forward is Mrs. Stott, a member of the Science Department and Assistant Dean of Student Life. In addition to roles teaching all levels of Chemistry, Mrs. Stott created and teaches La Salle’s Forensic Science class. She notes that “it started as one section but has completely grown since then. There were 75 kids that took it this year!" The class examines blood, DNA, and the criminal justice system itself. “The kids in my class mentioned that think it’s one of the most applicable sciences…It’s all over Netflix documentaries, so they feel like they can use it life.” As Assistant Dean of Student Life since 2019, Mrs. Stott organizes “the fun things we do here at La Salle.” Her role entails overseeing student council, managing
clubs and activities, and organizing events for the student body, like the Turkey Bowl or even Field Day, Mrs. Maher’s creation. However, this responsibility became extraordinarily difficult by the school-wide isolation that the pandemic caused. “The first two years of this position were really difficult [and] sad. [In] 2020 they didn’t get a prom.” Despite this, Mrs. Stott persevered and took the necessary steps to preserve some semblance of an extracurricular presence, such as giving clubs their own pages on Open LMS to improve online communication. “And then last year and this year, we have just been adapting as we go. We have been so fortunate this year to be able to do everything.” Whether looking at La Salle’s women from the past or present, it is undeniable that they are an indispensable part of our school community. Dr. Arellano puts it best: “The women have contributed to our school so profoundly that I cannot imagine what our school would look like without their presence.” -Zach Whiting ’22
The women of La Salle College High School Photo courtesy of Mr. Rob Johnson
About thirty years ago, Mrs. Maher watched in awe as a group of students morphed La Salle’s auditorium into a replica of the seashore—under her supervision, that is. “Over by the doors [as] you came into the auditorium, they had a beach. They loaded in tons of sand. The head of maintenance was ready to kill me.” What prompted Mrs. Maher to OK such a wild idea from her student council? Laughing, she says, “I was always the kind that said, ‘OK, we’ll try that.’ I never said no. That was my problem.” Since her arrival at La Salle in 1983, Mrs. Maher established herself as someone willing to push established rules and boundaries for the good of her school community. The first instance came when Mrs. Maher was tossed into teaching La Salle’s first computer literacy class after the Brother scheduled to teach it left the school. “They threw me into classes where there was no book. There was nothing. I had to create a curriculum.” Despite the suddenness of this responsibility, Mrs. Maher used a master’s degree in programming and her natural teaching ability to not only make the best of it but excel, becoming the first woman at La Salle
The Wisterian
A CLASS OF HER OWN
to teach computer science. Still, she remains humble. “Sometimes I see some of those fellas from years ago and we all laugh about it because I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no clue.” After about ten years of teaching chemistry and the physical sciences full-time, Mrs. Maher was offered a position in the school administration – another first for a woman at La Salle. She reduced her teaching load to one section of chemistry and assumed the title of Assistant Principal for Student Affairs, where she organized activities for the student body and oversaw the student council. In her new role, Mrs. Maher championed for innovations that are still staples in the La Salle community today. Case in point is Field Day. During a summer retreat with other Lasallian schools, Mrs. Maher noticed that Calvert Hall had a Field Day. This immediately sparked her interest. “We presented it to the faculty, and they weren’t very pleased to begin with because it meant losing class time. But Mr. Assaf was principal at that time, and he said to go for it. So we did.” The process was far from easy: “Oh, we worked our tails off.” But with some special
help from Mr. Coggins, the first La Salle Field Day was held on an “absolutely gorgeous” Monday morning. Despite some of their initially negative reactions, most teachers quickly changed course. “Mr. Colistra, who was chair of the Social Studies Department, called me that night at home and said to me it was one of the best days he ever had at La Salle because it was a different interaction with students.” Although Field Day can sometimes appear childish, “it bonds people together.” To Mrs. Maher, that is what matters. Then, in 2013, Mrs. Maher was named La Salle’s first Director of Mission and Ministry. Prior to this title, however, she was far from inexperienced in the field. In the 1990s, after a recommendation from a student’s parent, Mrs. Maher decided to look into St. Joe’s Prep’s senior retreat: Kairos. “I just thought it was important to look into.” After her discussion with Prep faculty, La Salle decided to adopt the retreat; Mr. Jackson and Mr. Coggins attended the first retreat, Mrs. Maher the third. “In the beginning, Kairos wasn’t very well accepted because a lot of the young men thought it was a cult of some kind. Which was OK
because it was something different. But it grew.” And grow it did, becoming a pivotal event in the life of nearly every senior at La Salle. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful experience. I think over the years I did maybe 30 to 35 retreats, and I value every one of them.” For Mrs. Maher, though, more important than any of her accomplishments was building relationships with her students and touching their hearts, just as Saint La Salle originally intended. “But they’ve touched my heart just as much as anybody else’s.” She was commonly known as the “school mother.” Every day, the boys stopped by her office, on one hand for a helping of candy, pretzels, and jolly ranchers, and on the other just to talk with her. “They came in just to talk. They I was listening. I listened to everything. I got all the gossip.” And it because of her role as a mother that Mrs. Maher has and will always refer to La Salle students as “her boys.” “It’s a special place to me and always will be.” -Zach Whiting ’22
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