From President Robert Wild, S.J.

Last year I stirred up a little excitement when at a public forum I suggested that Marquette might well be led one day by a lay president. I heard a collective intake of breath from the audience, so I reassured them that I am not contemplating retirement and plan to be working at Marquette for a good while longer. Furthermore, our bylaws require that Marquette be led by a Jesuit. That said, I believe that I was pointing to an obvious truth about the future: We have to prepare the Marquette community for what will be a likely occurrence sometime in the future.

You probably are aware that the number of men being ordained to the priesthood is declining. Especially in the Americas and in Europe the Society of Jesus is also experiencing this downturn. Add into that equation the increasing complexity of administering universities and the fact that Jesuits are called to many different types of ministry — as faculty members, parish priests, missionaries and retreat leaders — and you begin to understand why the pool of Jesuit candidates for presidencies is diminishing. You may be interested to learn that more than half of the 28 Jesuit institutions in this country no longer require a Jesuit president. For many years the University of Detroit Mercy was capably led by Maureen Fay, OP, a religious sister. And the country’s oldest Jesuit university, Georgetown, now has a lay president, Dr. John DeGoia, a man who is deeply committed to that institution’s Catholic, Jesuit identity.

The question before us is how do we ensure that Marquette remains truly committed to Jesuit values when and if the president would be someone other than a Jesuit.

In many regards we have been preparing for that eventuality for some time. Candidly, I am not overly concerned about what will happen to Marquette the first time we turn over the presidency to a layperson. I know that Marquette’s Board of Trustees will insist that this individual be strongly committed to our Catholic, Jesuit mission, and he or she will also be surrounded by a Catholic, Jesuit culture that permeates the university. The true test will come when the second and third lay presidents take office. How can we be certain that over time Marquette will not weaken or even lose its religious and value-oriented character?
Especially during the past decade we have put in place a comprehensive program to educate faculty and staff about Ignatian spirituality and the 450-year history and purpose of Jesuit education. Increasingly we consciously “hire for mission,” meaning that we seek personnel who are attracted by and open to learning more about our special institutional mission and character. As part of our ongoing efforts, we offer employees formative experiences and retreats so that they can reflect on their own role in forwarding our mission and exemplifying it daily in their work for Marquette. In addition, we already have a significant number of truly gifted lay leaders, including an executive director of mission and identity, who are well versed in spiritual formation and are deeply committed to preserving Marquette’s Ignatian heritage. These lay colleagues sense in themselves a special calling to hand on our Jesuit educational values to future generations of students.

Most importantly we continue to graduate students who have learned how to lead lives committed to excellence, to finding God in all people and to leadership expressed in service to others. In their work and in their lives our graduates truly are a source of pride for us, and I have no doubt that some of them will one day serve capably as leaders at this university.

So is my successor likely to be a lay person? Probably not, since there are a number of capable Jesuits willing and able to become a university president, and our trustees are committed to identifying and seeking out qualified Jesuits for this office. But could Marquette have a lay leader and continue to be a strong Catholic, Jesuit institution? Absolutely yes, and I say that because of how so many of my lay colleagues make Marquette’s mission their own. Consequently, whether the names of future presidents are followed by S.J. or not, I believe that Marquette will remain a university strongly committed to the core values of Jesuit education.