Remarks at Opening Dinner for Faculty and Staff
Father Jonathan DeFelice, O.S.B.
August 22, 2006

Good evening and a very special welcome to all the new members of our faculty and staff and their spouses and guests.  We are happy to have all of you as part of our Anselmian community.  Would all those who have joined our community since last August please stand and be recognized!

For those of you who are not new to the campus, you may know that my office underwent a major change this Summer with the retirement of Mrs. Joyce Shepherd who had served the College for almost forty years and who worked in the President’s Office for almost 25 years.  In case you have not met her, I would like to introduce the new Executive Secretary to the President, Mrs. Janet Poirier – I’m sure that you will find her a warm and welcoming presence in Alumni Hall.

Some of the monastic members of our community have had significant events in their lives since our last opening dinner.  Father Benedict, a longtime member of our Theology Faculty, celebrated the 25th anniversary of his monastic profession.  Father Bernard was ordained to the priesthood last January and joined our campus ministry staff immediately after his ordination.  He will continue his good work there this year as well. The newest member of our Benedictine Community, Brother Benjamin Marc Lavallee, a 2001 graduate of our college, made his first profession of vows earlier this month and will be teaching in our Humanities Program this year.

And while I am on the topic of special events – This year we are fortunate to say that, for I believe is the first time in our history, a member of our faculty is beginning a 50th year of teaching…and in fact was a professor of mine – but not 50 years ago!  This is obviously a very special moment in our College community history, on that deserves special recognition.  So, I am very pleased to announce that, with the approval of the Governing Board, an honorary doctorate degree, the College’s highest honor will be awarded at Commencement 2007 to our dear commissioner, Professor William Farrell.

I want to say a special work of thanks to our Executive Vice President, Dr. Marie George who has now completed her third year with us and this summer participated in a Catholic college leadership program sponsored by the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.  The program was held in Rome and provided a real insider’s look at the Vatican congregations that affect Catholic higher education.  In addition to this, Marie along with Pat Shuster, our Vice President for Administration has been working with our leadership team to develop a model for leadership based on our Catholic and Benedictine tradition.  We will hopefully bring that process to conclusion this year.

I know that many of you have already been involved with the implementation of a new Campus Information System, under the direction of our Chief Information Officer, Adam Albina.  I have seen the bleary eyes and heard the tired sighs of those involved in training sessions for hour on end from the business office, the registrar’s office and the offices of admission and financial aid, who are among the first to go live.  Thank you for this hard work that will in the end benefit all of the work we do.

To everyone of you present I express my heartfelt thanks for the wonderful and varied work that you do in so many areas of the College.  I am also very grateful for the work and generosity of our Trustees and benefactors who help our College in our quest for greatness.  Tonight I especially ask your prayers for one of them, Mr. Bill Guerin, Father Peter’s brother, who is facing a very serious illness.

I realize that this Summer has been a very busy one – every year it seems to get more so. We have successful financial audits and successful closing of the annual fund; we have trustee meetings and alumni reunion; we have renovations of residence halls and civic leadership academies; we have grounds improvements and sports camps – all these things combine to make our campus better in so many ways:  in the eyes of the public, in the eyes of our students, and hopefully too in the eyes of God.

Last year I reported that our Association of Benedictine Colleges and Universities was working on a statement defining the hallmarks of our Benedictine institutions.  This summer the association met again and will hopefully have another draft for review early this semester.  Abbot Matthew, who attended the meeting in Minnesota, will be saying a word about one of the hallmarks this evening. 

I was unfortunately not able to be present at that meeting because of the death of a very special son of Saint Anselm, Mr. Romulo O’Farrill.  Anne Botteri and I traveled to Mexico City to participate in a memorial Mass for Mr. O’Farrill and to meet with some of the members of his family.  I brought the prayers and sympathy of our College community for this truly great man whose love of Saint Anselm translated into scholarship funding for young women and men who, like himself, come to our College with English as their second language.  His family is interested in maintaining a connection here and so I am sure that you will be hearing more about this later on.

This coming year we will continue to work on the implementation of our strategic plan, Aspirations in Liberal Arts Education, and to begin to look at perhaps some new initiatives that will strengthen and develop our academic mission, and as we find the way to create greater racial and ethnic diversity on our campus.

At our President’s Society Dinner in September we will be celebrating the 5th anniversary of the dedication of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College and getting ready for what will, no doubt, be a very busy political season.  Though some on the national level are trying to steal away our first-in-the-nation status, there are so many from the Governor, to the Secretary of State, to the heads of the Democratic and Republican state parties who are committed to keeping what we have created as our own.  We will no doubt stand with them!

This academic year we will also begin some initial work on our next accreditation visit which will be in the Spring of 2009.  During the second semester we will establish the self-study committee and a timetable.  So get ready for the calls for help!

I am always energized by the return of our students when the campus finally feels normal again; when we can all see with our eyes and hear with our ears the reason we are involved in the work we do.  This year, as you know, we will have a robust class of 2010.  While this is going to present some challenges for all of us, I am very grateful for the good work of our office of admission and our office of financial aid in securing another outstanding class; and grateful that we are becoming the college of choice for greater numbers of students.  If anyone even reads casually about colleges and admissions, there are a number of institutions in New England that have not reached their desired numbers; and even worse in the areas affected last year by hurricane Katrina there are some who have fallen short in their numbers by hundreds.  In light of what some colleges are facing, ours is a very positive challenge for which I ask the creative cooperation of all of us to help these new students succeed.

Their success will depend in greatest part on their own sense of responsibility for their lives and work.  But it depends as well on what we do to insure that they have the best environment in which to grow and the best academic program that we can provide.  The students of this “millennial” generation have their own complexities about them.  On the one hand, they are the most sheltered generation we’ve seen for a while and on the other, they are open to, and expect diversity as a fact of life.  Our own new students expressed that in one real way with filling up two sections of introduction to the Chinese language that we are offering for the first time.  I have no doubt that will press in the near future for even greater language diversity, including Arabic…and maybe, who knows, even Italian! 

On the one hand, they are technologically very savvy and on the other hand they are rather naïve about the implications of technology as even a casual browse through their “Facebook” profiles will demonstrate.  I plan to speak to the class of 2010 about this when arrive.  Having only recently dipped my toe into the Facebook pool, I have discovered that some of the water of that pool is quite refreshing – full of the humor, interests, hopes and aspirations of these young students; however, I have also discovered that some of the water is nearly as murky as a cesspool, polluted with verbal disrespect, visual debauchery, and a seemingly complete lack of understanding of the implications of such a public forum.

I bring this up because this form of communication is not going away.  It is something that we cannot ignore and probably cannot censor.  But is something else for which I believe we need to set an example of good influence.  If we are to take seriously our vision to educate students who will be virtuous citizens and principled leaders, we have a responsibility to help our students understand the long-term implications of what they say and do in any forum. 

If their naïveté is such that they do not think others are aware of what is going in these types of venues, it is up to us to help them come to understand that reality.  As I said, I will speak to our incoming class about this later in the week, but I do ask your cooperation and support in any appropriate way to help our students develop into the women and men we wish them to become – in their virtual worlds as well as their actual ones. 

Respect, decency, regard for God and for others are virtues that we all need to cultivate in them.  This is our responsibility as a Catholic college. If anyone has practical suggestions on how to help with this, I am certainly more than willing to hear them.

I hope that you are greeting this new academic year with the same enthusiasm as I am.  Let us remember always that the good work we are doing will help advance a civilization of love for the good of society and the glory of God. 

I look forward to seeing you at the opening Mass next Monday morning.

Thank you and God bless you all.