Alumni Newsletter

Dear alumni,

Earlier this month, Pope Leo released a letter to educators, Drawing New Maps of Hope, in which he encouraged us to embrace our vocation in ways that could not be any timelier. He diagnoses three ailments that afflict education today: “hyper-digitalization can shatter attention; the crisis of relationships can harm the psyche; social insecurity and inequality can extinguish desire.” But at this historical moment, “Catholic education can be a beacon: not a nostalgic refuge, but a laboratory of discernment, pedagogical innovation, and prophetic witness.”

Several insights are of direct relevance to our St. Thomas community as we work to be, in Leo’s words, “choreographers of hope.”

• Lift your gaze: We should never reduce education “to functional training or an economic tool: a person is not a ‘skills profile,’ not reduced to a predictable algorithm, but a face, a history, a vocation.” For this reason, education “does not measure its value only on the axis of efficiency: it measures it on dignity, on justice, on the ability to serve the common good.” He urges: “Lift your gaze. As God said to Abraham, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars’ . . . know how to ask yourselves where you are going and why.”
• Formation is central: Our aspiration to support the development of the whole person must be a defining hallmark of our work, for “Education is not just the transmission of content, but an apprenticeship in virtue.” We must prioritize “the interior life,” for “young people demand depth; they need spaces for silence, discernment and dialogue with their conscience and with God.” Our mission of formation means that we teach in relationship, and “the relationship comes before opinion, the person before the program.”
• Don’t let technology obscure what makes us human: Pope Leo notes that, while “our attitude towards technology can never be hostile,” we must remember that “no algorithm can replace what makes education human: poetry, irony, love, art, imagination, the joy of discovery, even learning to make mistakes as an opportunity for growth.” In this regard, artificial intelligence and digital environments “must be geared toward protecting dignity, justice and work; they must be governed by criteria of public ethics and participation; they must be accompanied by appropriate theological and philosophical reflection.” We should “educate in the wise use of technology and AI, putting the person before the algorithm and harmonizing technical, emotional, social, spiritual, and ecological intelligence.”
• Do not fear hard questions or conversations: Pope Leo writes that “Catholic universities . . . are places where questions are not silenced, and doubt is not banished but supported. Heart . . . dialogues with heart, and the method is one of listening, which recognizes the other as a good, not a threat.”
• Education should be an instrument of peace: Because “education does not advance through polemics, but through the meekness that listens,” Leo implores us to “disarm your words.” We must educate “in nonviolent languages, reconciliation, bridges, not walls; ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ becomes the method and content of learning.” Our work must manifest “the promise we see in the future of humanity.”

Dear alumni,

There was extra energy on campus earlier this month as students geared up for Homecoming weekend. A new expression of school spirit this year was “the Homecoming Taxi” – a festively decorated golf cart careening around campus, with two exuberant students at the wheel, offering rides even if the passenger only needed to walk 50 feet to the next building. There were food, drink, and sweatshirt giveaways; concerts on the quad; and games galore on Monahan Plaza.

But Homecoming touches on something much deeper than campus energy and school pride, as important as those are. The late sociologist Robert Bellah, in his classic Habits of the Heart, wrote that a real community is “a community of memory.” Because it’s important that a community remembers its history across generations, it’s vital that a community continually commits to “retelling its story.” Our communities are not just backward-gazing, though. Bellah explained that communities of memory “tie us to the past,” but they also “turn us toward the future as communities of hope.” They “connect our aspirations for ourselves” with “the aspirations of a larger whole” and help us “see our own efforts as being, in part, contributions to a common good.”

On Homecoming morning, we celebrated the “Old Guard” reunion brunch – welcoming back to campus our alumni who graduated 50 or more years ago. This year the guests included a graduate from as far back as the class of 1950 – i.e., a Tommie who was born a mere decade after our founder, Archbishop John Ireland, died. Measured in lifetimes, a university born in 1885 is still quite young. And what do our graduates from 50 or more years ago tend to share with me? The same thing that graduates from five years ago want to share: stories of the friends they made at St. Thomas, and gratitude for the faculty and staff who touched their lives. Tom Pacholl ’50, for example, was an alum who passed away last year and played in the 1949 Cigar Bowl for St. Thomas. When I had the opportunity to talk with him, he didn’t share stories of gridiron exploits or career success. He talked about his St. Thomas buddies and how their friendships persisted over the decades.

As a community of memory, what are the stories we share with one another? What do these stories tell us about who we’ve been as a St. Thomas community, and who we aspire to be?

Recently, I met with a current student who has been talking with friends about ideas for building a strong and vocal student presence in the new Lee & Penny Anderson Arena (or as she referred to it, “The Penny.”) I asked her how the semester is going, and she told me she is loving a class that she didn’t expect to love – Insurance & Risk Management. The material is more interesting than she anticipated, and the professor, she said, is fabulous.

That student will be invited to her first Old Guard Reunion in 2076. I won’t be there, but I anticipate she’ll be sharing stories of the times she and her friends screamed themselves hoarse during the inaugural season of “The Penny,” and of how much she benefited from the teaching of that professor, Kyle Falconbury.

Founded on faith and fueled by friendships, St. Thomas is a community of memory and of hope. We will remember the past, and we will look to the future.

Roll Toms!

With warm regard,

Rob

Dear alumni,

I saw a photo on Aug. 27 that I know I’ll never forget. Maybe you saw it too; it was taken by a Star-Tribune photographer. A mom is sprinting barefoot down the middle of the street, her shoes in her hands, toward Annunciation Church. Desperate to find her child, terrified that she’ll never hold her beloved son or daughter again. Every parent’s worst nightmare, which we shove away and out of mind as best we can. Until the nightmare becomes the reality from which there is no escape.

I saw another photo on Aug. 27 that I hope I’ll never forget. It was taken by my colleague Brandon Woller on move-in day. A first-year student had arrived from Colorado, excited and nervous. Beside her, her mom is beaming. Tired from a long day of travel, but proud of her daughter, eager to see her flourish in this new place among new people. Hopeful for the future.

Can we reconcile those photos, or does the first render the second irrelevant, a momentary and superficial distraction from the pain all around us? How can the hopefulness of our incoming students withstand the sheer awfulness of what we all have absorbed in the past few weeks? How can the excitement of a new school year withstand the death and traumatization of young children in south Minneapolis? Or Gaza? Or Ukraine? Or Sudan?

We emerged from a very emotional Mass in our chapel on Aug. 27 and went directly to greet new students and their families. In our chapel, the grief was unmistakable. A few yards away, families unloading their cars had good reason for excitement, for joy, for hope. Sometimes the whiplash feels unavoidable.

But what if it’s not whiplash at all? What if all the amazing triumphs we’ll experience with our students this year – the formation of friendships, the deepening of faith, the discovery of scientific truths, the creation of art, the development of leadership, the gaining of technical expertise, the cultivation of virtue, the sharpening of critical thinking, the growth of confidence – are direct responses to a world that sometimes seems hard-wired to define the human condition as pointless and cruel? No matter the headlines, we will not deny this generation of students the chance to experience meaning and purpose in their lives.

As a new year begins, I can’t ignore the suffering around me, but I can’t surrender to it either. This is sacred work to which we’ve been called.

We live in a broken world, and we will hold fast to hope. We will pray for peace. We will work for justice. And we will love our students.

With warm regard,
Rob

Dear alumni,

Last week, I spent time with a relative preparing for his sophomore year at a large public university in a neighboring state. I asked if he was looking forward to the new year, and he looked at his shoes. “Not really.” The classes are fine, he explained, but it can be pretty lonely on campus.

I thought of him when I saw headlines reporting the results of a new global survey by Gallup. The survey shows that “people in more countries are living better lives and expressing more hope for the future than they have in years.” A median of 33% of adults across 142 countries reported strong enough well-being to be classified as “thriving,” while a median of 7% of adults reported weak enough well-being to be classified as “suffering.” Huge increases in well-being over the past ten years are reported in countries as diverse as Kosovo, Vietnam, Paraguay, and Kazakhstan. Rates of thriving have risen consistently across demographics, while rates of suffering have trended lower.

But not here. The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe have all seen their rates of thriving decrease. In the world’s most advanced economies, the numbers are headed in the wrong direction. So what’s going on?

David Brooks spoke with a Gallup researcher to break down the numbers. Yes, living standards and economic development matter, as do personal freedoms and the well-being of one’s children. But social and spiritual health are also key. People who are thriving feel attached to their communities, are more likely to join congregations and attend religious services, and experience a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives.

These insights are buttressed by Harvard’s Global Flourishing Study, which has interviewed 200,000 people across 22 countries, showing that some countries tend to be very strong on social and spiritual health despite economic challenges (e.g., Mexico, Philippines, Indonesia) while the United States has a strong economy but social and spiritual environments “that are deteriorating.” The head of the Harvard study speculates that our priorities make the difference, and that while economic gain is good, it should not be pursued “at the expense of meaning and community.” Unlike previous eras, young Americans today are the unhappiest age group, having grown up in a society with low levels of trust and high levels of isolation.

Brooks concludes from his conversations that American society’s embrace of hyper-individualism is corrosive, and that our myopic focus on economic success has caused us to neglect “the social and moral conditions that undergird human flourishing.” In light of a growing body of research, he implores schools to educate not only for professional success, but also for social and spiritual health.

As a new academic year looms, I carry my young relative’s story and these researchers’ insights with me. Will I seize opportunities to help make a connection, to be a source of encouragement, to notice and walk alongside those students for whom the possibility of thriving feels beyond reach?

Our mission of whole-person formation emerges from an educational tradition that stretches back thousands of years, but it is not some dusty relic. It is directly responsive to the needs of today’s students, as underscored through study after heart-breaking study. I feel sorrow for the pain behind these numbers, but I’m grateful that we can do something about it.

As an alum and valued member of our Tommie Network, you can help our Tommies thrive. Consider mentoring a student who is interested in your profession, speaking on a career panel in a class or during a campus club meeting, or sending a personal message to a student who needs encouragement and to feel supported. Visit our website or reach out to our Alumni Engagement team at alumni@stthomas.edu to learn how you can make a difference.

With warm regard,
Rob

Dear alumni,

Colleges and universities have been navigating an increasingly treacherous government landscape. While the most apocalyptic scenarios were avoided in the budgets ultimately enacted by Congress and the Minnesota Legislature in recent weeks, we are still grappling with shortfalls in state grant funding for low-income students, federal grant cancellations and significant reductions in federal student lending. While the most draconian proposals were defeated, we have to face the fact that Democrats and Republicans alike have been introducing measures that are directly contrary to the best interests of higher ed. How did we get here?

Put simply, elected officials on both sides of the political spectrum have concluded that they can go after colleges and universities with very little downside politically. Americans are not running to the defense of higher ed. And surveys bear this out. Last year, Gallup found that 32% of U.S. adults have “little or no confidence” in higher ed. In 2015 when Gallup first measured confidence in higher ed, 10% had little or no confidence. In 2015, nearly 60% of adults had “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” in higher ed, and that had fallen to 36% by last year. Though the change has been most dramatic among Republicans, Democrats and Independents have also shown a significant decline in confidence over that time.

We could have a long and rollicking discussion about underlying causes – about ways that universities have, in fact, been poor stewards of the public trust, and about the extent to which missteps by universities have been weaponized politically to loom larger in the public consciousness than is warranted by the facts. Those are important conversations to have. Not as important, though, as figuring out the path forward.

There are two temptations to avoid. First, we must not seek to become part of what Harvard professor Michael Sandel refers to as "the sorting machine," i.e. the segment of higher ed that fuels public resentment by facilitating a winner-takes-all contest over admissions. We cannot define excellence based on our acceptance rate. As Sandel points out, for example, Johns Hopkins accepted 54% of its applicants in 1988; now it accepts 9%. The University of Chicago accepted 77% of applicants in 1993; in 2019, it accepted 6%. Sandel argues that the race to exclude as many prospective students as possible has helped fuel the “anti-elitism” wave, as more and more university resources are poured into a very small group of students. At St. Thomas, our impact is not through the signal sent by an acceptance letter – i.e., “this worthy 18-year-old won the haves-versus-have-nots lottery!” It’s through the growth and development that happens through the education we provide.

Second, we must not become transactional, focused simply on providing necessary job skills as efficiently as possible. Efficiency is important, but I believe one reason we have such strong employment outcomes at St. Thomas is because we care about more than employment outcomes. By engaging our students on deeper questions of meaning and purpose and helping them grow in character, we are preparing them for lifelong flourishing. If college is only an economic transaction, we’re telling our students that they don’t need to spend time or energy understanding history, grappling with the meaning of life, developing a love of art or literature, experiencing the joy of scientific discovery, honing their leadership skills, appreciating the wonders of nature, pushing forward on their faith journey, or discerning their vocation. And they definitely don’t need to spend time or energy figuring out how it all fits together, exploring whether diverse domains of knowledge have any relationship to one another.

We call our students – and ourselves – to something greater. We are in the business of transformation, helping develop students’ whole selves – body, mind, spirit – and cultivating the virtues necessary not only to succeed professionally, but to thrive as a person. That’s a thread that is discernible in the life of our university all the way back to 1885, and it’s as important now as it ever has been.

Can St. Thomas hold back the tide of legislation that is harmful to higher ed? Probably not entirely, at least in the near term. We are going to have to weather the storm, like every other college and university. And we will do so while staying true to our mission, telling our own distinctive story and demonstrating our impact through the lives of our graduates. It may be a bumpy ride for higher ed over the next few years, but there is no university I’d rather be leading than St. Thomas. We should be proud of our work and steadfast in our hope for the future.

With warm regard,
Rob

Dear alumni,

Our St. Paul campus erupted in celebration on May 8 as Pope Leo XIV was announced. A packed viewing party at Scooter’s, our own Popemobile parade, and even white smoke emanating from a chimney built for the occasion above our SJV seminary marked a jubilant day in history. Only time will tell how this papacy will shape the Catholic Church and the broader world, but it is not too early to comment on the significance of the new pope’s first decision: his name.

In choosing to be called Leo XIV, he is demonstrating a commitment to continue the legacy of Pope Leo XIII, who served from 1878 to 1903. Why should we care? One interesting connection is that the name of our university was almost certainly due to Leo XIII. In 1879, he called Catholics “to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas [Aquinas], and to spread it far and wide.” And he instructed “universities already founded or to be founded [to] illustrate and defend” the wisdom of his teaching. Six years later, Archbishop Ireland opened the doors of a new Catholic college in St. Paul – it would have surprised no one at the time that we were named for St. Thomas.

But of deeper relevance to us is the fact that Leo XIII laid the foundation for Catholic social teaching in his landmark 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. At a time when the Industrial Revolution had displaced and upended the lives of millions of workers around the world, Leo XIII charted a path that rejected both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. He defended private property rights, insisted on the dignity and rights of workers, championed the importance and goodness of labor, and advocated for a living wage. The encyclical’s impact was significant – in fact, the moral theologian and St. Thomas alum Fr. John Ryan credited Rerum Novarum with shaping his economic views; President Roosevelt credited Fr. Ryan, in turn, as a key influence on his “New Deal” programs. Has the time come to return to these issues? As Cardinal Blase Cupich (archbishop of Chicago and another St. Thomas alum) remarked on Friday, “We might have a Rerum Novarum 2.0” from Pope Leo XIV given threats to the dignity and rights of workers in a rapidly changing world. Indeed, Leo XIV remarked that the Church’s social teaching must respond “to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”

Whether or not Leo XIV tackles workers’ rights, his embrace of Leo XIII is important. Rerum Novarum spawned a body of work to which nearly every subsequent pope has contributed, addressing social issues through the seven themes of what is now known as Catholic social teaching: 1) life and dignity of the human person; 2) the importance of family, community, and participation; 3) rights and responsibilities; 4) the preferential option for the poor; 5) the dignity of work and the rights of workers; 6) solidarity; and 7) care for God’s creation.

For a Catholic university, the Church’s social teaching is an inescapable reminder that the faith that drove our founding and animates our mission today can never be a rationale for withdrawing from the world around us. We are compelled to care about justice. We are compelled not only to engage in charity, but also to analyze and improve systems that marginalize. We are compelled to care for the environment. We are mindful of the world to come, but we are also compelled to do all we can to contribute to human flourishing in the here and now.

We are just starting to get to know Pope Leo XIV. He hasn’t produced an encyclical or offered a major address. But his name itself speaks volumes. Disconnection from the world’s suffering can be a temptation for academics (“the ivory tower”) and for religious believers (being “so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good”). Catholic social teaching makes plain: that is not an option for St. Thomas. If you pray for our new pope, please also pray that we will be up to the work he has already set before us.

With warm regard,
Rob

Dear alumni,

At an event earlier this month, I met a member of the class of 1952. He told me about his long career spent leading large, complex organizations. I asked him about his time at St. Thomas, and he responded, “I didn’t like it. I’ve never enjoyed being told what to do.” While I was pondering an appropriate follow-up, he filled the silence with a tentative reflection: “You know, I guess St. Thomas did help me figure out some boundaries between right and wrong, and I relied on those in my work.” “Kind of a moral compass?,” I asked. “Yes, you could say that.”

Sometimes when I welcome alumni back to campus, they have a hard time getting their bearings because so much of the physical environment has changed since they graduated. Fortunately, even though many of the buildings are new, I’m able to identify key aspects of their own St. Thomas experience that haven’t changed – and must never change. These are the threads that run all the way back to 1885.

My conversation with our alum about his moral compass reminded me that one central thread is the whole-person formation of our students – i.e., we don’t just care about what you know or can do; we care about who you’re becoming, about the person you aspire to be. Today our students experience that through story-telling initiatives, conversations on vocation and purpose, the exploration of character and virtue, and so much other work that takes place both inside and outside the classroom. The ways that formation happens vary widely over time and from student to student, but the thread is unmistakable.

Our commitment is reflected in the care we show for the type of person our students are becoming, but it’s also reflected in the recognition we extend for the type of person our graduates have become. Consider the honorees we will celebrate at St. Thomas Day on April 23:

• Charles Morgan Kisitu ’10, founder of See Them Grow Foundation, dedicated to support the health and well-being of women and girls in Uganda.
• Brian McEnaney ’85, a healthcare executive who has served on our CAS advisory board and as a longtime, dedicated mentor for many St. Thomas students.
• Dr. John B. Molidor ’73, has helped shape future generations of physicians with leadership roles in medical education and as founder of the Brain-Based Leadership Institute.
• Teron Buford ’10, ’18 MSWA, leads diversity, inclusion, and belonging efforts at a leading Minnesota company while giving his time and attention to our current students.
• Aidan McGill ’25, a student leader and academic standout who serves in the Army National Guard and exemplifies “responsibility, teamwork and a strong work ethic.”
• J. Roxanne Prichard, PhD, a professor of psychology who devotes her time, expertise and energy to helping improve sleep health among college students.

When we are faithful to this dimension of our mission, we’re advancing the common good far beyond our campus boundaries through the wide-ranging impact of our graduates. And we’re also contributing to our graduates’ own lifelong well-being. A growing body of research is confirming that formation matters. In one recent Harvard study, researchers found that strong moral character (defined in the study as knowing the right thing to do, being willing to do what is right, using one’s strengths to help others, being kind, and embracing delayed gratification) leads to better mental and physical health.

Are prospective students and their families responding to what we offer? Over the past five years, our undergraduate applications are up 22%.

Our mission, our business model and the best interests of our students point us in the same direction: our work is formation. We will prepare students to thrive in their careers, to be sure, but our deeper aspiration is to empower them to flourish as human beings. I’m grateful for all you do to keep this aspiration vibrant and vital at St. Thomas.

With warm regard,
Rob

Dear alumni,

As millions around the world continue to pray for Pope Francis, I’d like to take the opportunity to reflect on his legacy. In my view, his lessons for our time are best reflected in his encyclical (i.e., papal letter), titled “Fratelli Tutti,” on the theme of “fraternity and social friendship.” Though he wrote it “from the Christian convictions that inspire and sustain me,” he explained that “I have sought to make this reflection an invitation to dialogue among all people of good will.” He published the letter in October 2020, at a time when a global pandemic, racial injustice, economic uncertainty, and growing political polarization were straining our social ties. Several lessons are of direct relevance to the challenges our St. Thomas community faces today:

Dialogue is difficult but essential: Pope Francis wrote that dialogue “calls for perseverance; it entails moments of silence and suffering, yet it can patiently embrace the broader experience of individuals and peoples. . . . [when our conversations] revolve only around the latest data; they become merely horizontal and cumulative. We fail to keep our attention focused, to penetrate to the heart of matters, and to recognize what is essential to give meaning to our lives. Freedom thus becomes an illusion that we are peddled, easily confused with the ability to navigate the internet. The process of building fraternity, be it local or universal, can only be undertaken by spirits that are free and open to authentic encounters.”

We are to shoulder the responsibilities of life as it is: Faced with “so much pain and suffering, our only course is to imitate the Good Samaritan,” as to do otherwise “would make us either one of the robbers or one of those who walked by without showing compassion for the sufferings of the man on the roadside.” We must remember that “a community can be rebuilt by men and women who identify with the vulnerability of others, who reject the creation of a society of exclusion, and act instead as neighbors, lifting up and rehabilitating the fallen for the sake of the common good.”

We are all responsible for keeping real people at the center of our work: “Solidarity finds concrete expression in service, which can take a variety of forms in an effort to care for others ... In offering such service, individuals learn to ‘set aside their own wishes and desires, their pursuit of power, before the concrete gaze of those who are most vulnerable ... Service always looks to their faces, touches their flesh, senses their closeness and even, in some cases, ‘suffers’ that closeness and tries to help them. Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people.”

Our respect for the dignity of others must be unconditional: “At a time when various forms of fundamentalist intolerance are damaging relationships between individuals, groups and peoples, let us be committed to living and teaching the value of respect for others, a love capable of welcoming differences, and the priority of the dignity of every human being over his or her ideas, opinions, practices and even sins” despite the “forms of fanaticism, closedmindedness and social and cultural fragmentation [that] proliferate in present-day society.”

Our ambitions must not distract us from the needs of others: Pope Francis puts it simply: “loving the most insignificant of human beings as a brother, as if there were no one else in the world but him, cannot be considered a waste of time.” We must realize “that what is important is not constantly achieving great results, since these are not always possible. . . . it is truly noble to place our hope in the hidden power of the seeds of goodness we sow, and thus to initiate processes whose fruits will be reaped by others. Good politics [and good university education!] combines love with hope and with confidence in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts.”

Kindness, kindness, kindness: The practice of kindness can “help make other people’s lives more bearable . . . it involves ‘speaking words of comfort, strength, consolation and encouragement’ and not ‘words that demean, sadden, anger or show scorn.’ . . . Kindness frees us from the cruelty that at times infects human relationships, from the anxiety that prevents us from thinking of others . . . . Kindness ought to be cultivated; it is no superficial bourgeois virtue. Precisely because it entails esteem and respect for others, once kindness becomes a culture within society it transforms lifestyles, relationships and the ways ideas are discussed and compared. Kindness facilitates the quest for consensus; it opens new paths where hostility and conflict would burn all bridges.”

In the coming week, what simple steps might we take to integrate the Pope’s reminders with the work we have before us? As our world reels from anxiety, violence, uncertainty and loss, what might it look like for us to “combine love with hope and with confidence in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts?”

With warm regard,
Rob