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.