Remembering our Founders

Saint Xavier University recently honored its Sisters of Mercy heritage and celebrated the liberal arts and sciences with our annual Founder’s Day celebration on the Chicago Campus.

We began our day with a Eucharistic Celebration in McDonough Chapel. We later opened the afternoon ceremony by ringing the Academy Bell outside the Warde Academic Center to commemorate the University’s Sisters of Mercy founders. The historic bell, originally part of Saint Xavier Academy, which opened in 1846 in downtown Chicago on Wabash and Madison, survived the Chicago fire of 1871.

The celebration was interspersed with various speakers, both visiting and from within Saint Xavier, who discussed the liberal arts and sciences and how their own lives are affected by them. These lively discussions were punctuated with beautiful music provided by our own Campus Ministry Chapel Choir and the Women of Distinction Choral Ensemble.

I would encourage prospective students and their families to learn more about this University’s values and how we use them to provide a uniquely Mercy education. Click here to read about our philosophy, mission and history.

Sustainable Campus

During my presidency, I have maintained that universities and colleges must take the lead in healthy environmental practices. We are, due to our large physical plants and constant need for new facilities and power, "cities within cities" and thus have an enormous effect on our society, both environmentally and ideologically.

One would be hard pressed to find a school anywhere in the city of Chicago that has taken as many different steps as Saint Xavier to protect the environment. Just a sample of our accomplishments includes erecting the first University building in the state of Illinois to earn the coveted LEED Gold designation from the U.S. Green Building Council for sustainable building practices, launching the first bike share program of its kind in the country to reduce fuel-burning traffic, and being the first university in Chicago to sign the President’s Climate Commitment. For a more complete list of Saint Xavier’s green activities, please visit http://greencampus.sxu.edu/.

I had the pleasure recently of taking a tour of the University’s new Office of Sustainability located on our Chicago campus. Student employees and interns engage in green projects ranging from searching for grants, maintaining SXU’s new GreenBike program, and collecting information from individual departments across campus for a greenhouse gas audit taking into account all University activities that create greenhouse emissions, including transportation and power use.

The Office of Sustainability serves as a laboratory where students such as SXU senior David Hasty (pictured upper left), who is helping coordinate the greenhouse gas audit, and freshman Angelice Cunningham, who searches for sustainability grants, gain real world experience working on green projects.

If you are interested in learning more about the Office of Sustainability, please contact Sara Patzkowsky at (773) 341-5299 or s.patzkowsky@sxu.edu.

Campus Safety Day

In April of this year, Saint Xavier University was reluctantly drawn into a national conversation about how schools should react to threats of violence on campus. After an anonymous threat was found in a student resident hall giving a specific date, we decided to close our campus for four days until the threat was deemed no longer credible by law enforcement.

The decision to close was weighed carefully with input from the FBI, the Chicago Police and the SXU Police. I am pleased to say that we acted in a caring and coordinated fashion to protect the safety of our students, faculty and staff. Students who could not travel home were placed in hotels. During this time we took great pains to communicate with the entire community through a variety of communication tools, including a dedicated Web site, press releases, blogs and a text message alert system to cell phones.

To continue ensuring the highest quality of safety, Saint Xavier University students, faculty, staff and the public are invited to experience Campus Safety Day on Monday, Nov. 10 at SXU’s Chicago campus, 3700 W. 103rd St.

Visitors will learn about the latest emergency response and management equipment, technology, and safety procedures in place for a variety of disasters ranging from winter storms and fires to an active shooter on campus. Representatives from the FBI, the American Red Cross and The Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communication will give lectures on preparedness, and various agencies will provide educational displays. There also will be an emergency response vehicle display tour.

Students, faculty and staff are encouraged to view the video Shots fired on Campus: When Lightning Strikes, which provides guidance for surviving an active shooter situation. Click here for a complete schedule of events.

The safety of our students, faculty and staff is a primary concern at Saint Xavier University. We live in a new era of safety challenges, and we are prepared to face them. I encourage you to participate in the events of this important day.

A timely visit

America’s favorite political couple, Democratic strategist James Carville and Republican strategist Mary Matalin, graced Saint Xavier University Thursday night with one of our most entertainingly relevant evenings on record.

Ms. Matalin, who is from Burnham, Ill., charmed our capacity audience with her dry observations, often deployed at the expense of her equally engaging husband. Mr. Carville was in turn equally funny and willing to share the inside stories and scathing political commentary that have made these two the top in their field. I would note that they were as gracious off stage as they were on, both of them kind with our staff and generous with their time.

It is the role of any great university to engage the community in thoughtful discussion about relevant events. Given that they spoke here just days away from this most historic presidential election, I can’t imagine a better opportunity for Chicagoans to gain valuable insight into how campaigns operate than to see two of the greatest political minds in the country.

Opportunities for Chicagoans to share time with such world famous minds reinforces what a treasure the Sisters of Mercy gave Chicago when they created Saint Xavier. We were very pleased that both Oprah and NBC chose to come to Saint Xavier to interview Ms. Matalin and Mr. Carville.

I have included below a video sample of the event for you to enjoy from this excellent evening:

Good friends and new buildings

As any university president will tell you, your life and that of your institution are inextricably intertwined. The past two weeks were rich and rewarding ones for both of us.

Photo from left to right: State Representative Kevin Joyce (D- 35), State Representative Jim Brosnahan (D-36), SXU President Judith A. Dwyer, Ph.D., Cook County Commissioner John Daley (D-11), State Senator Ed Maloney (D-18).

On Wednesday, Oct. 8, Saint Xavier University hosted the third annual “Breakfast with Your Legislators,” coordinated by a partnership with the Beverly Area Planning Association and the Evergreen Park Chamber of Commerce. Approximately 100 area business people attended the event.

Elected officials taking part included State Senator Ed Maloney, D-18, State Representative Kevin Joyce, D-35, State Representative Jim Brosnahan, D-36, and Cook County Commissioner John P. Daley D-11. Our guests discussed the impact of the current financial crisis on state and local government, the passage of a capital bill, a potential Cook County sales tax increase, and the pros and cons of a constitutional convention.

On Wednesday, Oct. 15, we dedicated our newest residence hall, named as a tribute to Mother Mary Agatha O’Brien, R.S.M., one of the six founders of the Sisters of Mercy of Chicago. Through this legacy name, we celebrate Mother Agatha’s pioneering achievements and the continued ministry of the Sisters of Mercy. Please click below for an excerpt of the ceremony.



More than 100 Saint Xavier University students recently moved into this new environmentally friendly residence hall. The 36,664 square-foot residence hall is the sixth residence hall at the Chicago campus.

The hall was built to LEED Gold Environmental Standards as set forth by the U.S. Green Building Council. Last year, SXU’s Arthur Rubloff Hall became the first university building in the state of Illinois to receive the coveted LEED Gold designation from the U.S. Green Building Council for environmentally friendly design elements.

Saint Xavier is a proud leader in green practices. We are a member of the Illinois Sustainable University Compact, which has pledged to accomplish multiple environmentally sound goals by December 31, 2010. More recently, SXU became the first university in Chicago to sign the Presidents’ Climate Commitment, joining 557 other schools nationwide in a pledge to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.

Internet/Intranet

A few weeks ago I wrote about several changes coming to Saint Xavier’s physical facilities. I’m pleased to say that our information infrastructure is also due for a major overhaul.

On Oct. 31, we will unveil Saint Xavier’s new public Web site with pages reorganized to make browsing easier. At that same time, we will launch our intranet site, which will house many of the tools students, faculty and staff currently use on our existing Web site.

The new intranet site will have a personalized portal page, reorganized content and better search capabilities. The portal will be customized with news, events and Web links tailored specifically for you.

Beyond Internet and intranet pages, Information Services has teamed with Google to provide students with a new robust e-mail system powered by Gmail, which will also go online Nov. 1. Each new MyMail account will provide more than six gigabytes of storage from famously reliable Google servers.

We are also streamlining our identity login practices. Formerly known as your SXU Domain account, the new netID and password will be used to logon to mySXU, CLAWS and Web Files. Students who log on to my SXU will have one-click access to their myMail inbox. We are also launching a new Password Management System to allow you to reset your password instantly, without needing to call the Help Desk.

These are significant changes, and there are bound to be a few challenges during the first few weeks of operation as everyone becomes used to the new system. I ask your patience during this period as we provide you and the public these top-flight information tools. This is an extraordinary year for Saint Xavier.

Chicago Police Officer Nathaniel "Nate" Taylor Jr.

One hears phrases such as “outpouring of support” so often that, in time, they can lose their meaning. However, we can also experience events that redefine them for us. Saint Xavier University conferred a posthumous graduate certificate at the funeral of Chicago Police Officer Nathaniel "Nate" Taylor Jr., who was shot and killed Sunday, Sept. 28, while serving a warrant.

With great sadness but also with great honor, I presented the graduate certificate to Officer Taylor’s wife, Alcione, at the service in St. Bede the Venerable Roman Catholic Church on Friday. I have rarely seen such love and support as shown by the friends, family and significant numbers of officers from nearly every police force in the Chicago area.

A 2007 Saint Xavier University graduate, Officer Taylor was enrolled in the Graham School of Management’s financial fraud examination and management MBA program. He was by all accounts a warm and dedicated person with a bright future.

Saint Xavier has a long educational partnership with the Chicago Police Department, and we feel keenly such a tragic loss. I worry that we as a society too often take for granted the risks these brave men and women take every day to protect us.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Alcione, her young daughter, Naomi, their family and extended family throughout the Chicago Police Department.