 through celebration of Faithful University's foundation. My name's Paul Lakeland. I direct the Center for Catholic Studies. This is the Bellaman Lecture, and this is to be given by Father Tom Rieken. So I'm gonna give you the official thing about Tom Rieken and then I'm gonna give you the other thing about Tom Rieken. So Tom has his undergraduate degree from Boston College, his master's and doctorate from Fordham University, his MDiv from Western School of Theology. You can see he didn't step far outside the family. He has a postgraduate diploma in pastoral theology from Heathrock College in the University of London. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1976, was made an ordained priest in 87. Before ordination, he taught religious studies at Fordham Prep and he taught philosophy at Fairfield University. After his ordination, he came back to Fairfield. He taught in the philosophy department for many years. He was tenured here. He was chair of the department for quite a while and he was co-director of the program in legal studies. And after that, he briefly joined the dark side and became associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, only a harbinger of things to come. In 2003, he was swept away from us to become a provincial of the New England province where he served for six years. After that, they gave him, I guess, a kind of relaxation year in California and then he went on to Loyola, Chicago and where Tom is currently, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University in Chicago. That's the official story. The Bellamon Lecture is given every year by a distinguished Jesuit scholar. And I've introduced this distinguished Jesuit scholar now for about 12 years. This is the first time I've been able to say of that distinguished Jesuit scholar. I knew him when he was nothing. Actually, I knew him when we were both nothing as a matter of fact. When I came to Fairfield in 1981, Tom was in his second year as a Jesuit scholastic, as a student prior to ordination, teaching in the philosophy department and I was kind of finding my way in this new environment. And actually, not long after that, we taught together. We did some of what I take to be some of the earliest team teaching done at Fairfield University. We taught a course together on the religious imagination. I don't remember a lot about it except that he and I mildly disagreed with one another at the podium. And we had lines of anxious students trying to figure out why we were so angry with one another. I don't know if any of you were in the room, but maybe you remember that if you were. So when it came time to think about a Bellamon lecturer this year, I was looking for someone who knew Fairfield well, who knew the Jesuit tradition well, who was no longer here and who was also a great public speaker. And it did not take me long to think of my good friend and colleague Tom Regan. I asked you to welcome him here as he gives what really is kind of the beginning, the inaugural lecture of the 75th anniversary season. So Tom, the podium is yours. Thank you, Paul. And it is beyond the pleasure to be here tonight and see so many friends from way back. I won't embarrass you by saying how way back it is, but it's like a coming home occasion for me. And it really is a real treat to be here. I am not a historian, but I'm a very good listener. And so what you're gonna hear is a lot of stories I heard about the early history from the people who made them. Stories that came out over dinner, over a glass of wine at the Jesuit community, in the faculty dining room. And it really is surprising that I feel so much a part of the history of this great institution. And I think if you take away anything from that, is just to stand in awe at where Fairfield is in 2017, given the fact it's only 75 years old. My metaphor for tonight is congratulations, you have built an airplane while flying it, right? And so what I'd like to do is really in three parts. The first is I'd like to just quickly talk about what a Jesuit education is, because it was already 400 years in the making when Fairfield opened its doors. The secondly is I will take you down memory lane. And most of the people that you'll see are people I knew. I tried to stay away from too many names, so I've juxtaposed buildings and presidents and what went on during that time. And we'll bring that up to the present, and then I'm gonna really scare you. I'm gonna talk about the future of higher education. Because in a sense, it's not only where you've been and where you are, but where you're going and the climate in which you're gonna have to go there. And so if I can do technology, well, we'll see. Here's the first thing. Ignatius never thought that he would get into schools. It wasn't his idea at all, as we'll see. He was exquisitely educated in the 1530s, and he was at the University of Paris. All the first Jesuits had master's degrees from the University of Paris, and they wanted their young Jesuits to go out and be missionaries for the whole world. And so he gave them, he set up a system where they would receive exactly the same education that he had received at the University of Paris. So the order really gets started with the Papal Bull in 1540, and they start schools. And they don't start schools for outside people, they start training. So these are formation programs. And as we'll see, we'll go look at that. So literally this goes on for a while. And in 1547, some of the rich people in Massina say, wow, this looks like a really good education. I'd like to get this for my sons. Unfortunately, the women will have to wait. But we're gonna get this for our sons. And so Ledesma, who comes much after Ignatius said, well, now that we've been doing this for a couple years and we have like 56 schools now in very short time, what are we doing? Why are we in education? So this is a post-factum rationale. We run schools, he said, to give student advantages for practical living. If you're gonna go through life, it's better to be educated than uneducated. Who could argue with that? Secondly, to contribute to the right government of public affairs, you're training leaders. This is all about training leaders, as we'll see. So if you're gonna run a corporation, if you're gonna run an army, if you're gonna run a school, you should really have a good training. Thirdly, to give ornament and splendor and perfection to the rational nature of humanity. We are born to think. And therefore, the reality is, if you are trained in how to think, that is the glory of God fully alive. As Athanasius would say, that's what it is. If you have these gifts, use them. And finally, in the middle of the Reformation, to be a bulwark of religion and a guide to individuals so you can go out and fight with those Protestants. That was what they were thinking. But it gets a little bit more complicated. And believe me, it gets a lot more complicated. What he has Ignatius is a worldview. This is the education that he received. And if you'll notice, the centrality of education. Education, the Latin, educo, edutere, just to lead out. That's what it means. So go into that cave in Book Seven of Plato's Republic and lead out those troglodytes. And it's like Matthew 25. Those who have been gifted have an obligation to go back. And so here's the service dimension right away. And therefore, you'll notice, how does education look for Ignatius? Well, you start around age 10 when you do harmony and gymnastics, so body and mind. And then ultimately, there's cuts. And so when you're a teenager, like SATs, you go into the next level of the curriculum and grammar, rhetoric, and logic. You learn how to write. You learn how to think. You learn how to speak. And so you'll notice that's basically the trivium as it existed in the University of Paris in the 1530s. Then you go on about after that in the late 20s, you have another test, another cut, and you start doing arithmetic, geometry, plane and solid, astronomy, harmony, the quadrivium. We're laying out here the basis of the BA curriculum and the BS curriculum. Look familiar? Are you done? Absolutely not. You have to learn to ask the right questions. And so here's the dialectical training, right? Training of the mind. And ultimately, it doesn't matter how smart you are, you have to go back and you'll see and actually learn not only to be head smart, but to be able to lead. You'll notice that I have just laid out for you the education of the guardians in book seven of Plato's Republic. If you are going to train someone, the outcome, Plato says, we want officers and gentlemen. That's the outcome. Well, how do you get there? Well, this is what he lays out. If that's what you want to produce, this is what you're gonna have to have. And so unfortunately, if you're interested in this getting through quickly, the dialectic takes you up to age 35 and then 15 years of praxis. But you'll also know that this is basically, up until Silicon Valley, laying out the dimensions of how to become a CEO. Because once you, it doesn't matter how smart you are, can you lead people? Will people follow you? Have you had the experience in different parts of the country? Company. Have you had experience in different parts of the world? And so at age 50, you get to be a philosopher king or queen, Plato got it right, all right? And so literally, if we took it in ancient spirituality, we want to find God in all things. Well, what things in which can you find him? Well, you can find God in the material world. You can find God in the world of life. You can find God in consciousness. You can find God in self-awareness and reflection. And so ultimately, looking at this, here we have the disciplines. You want to find God in the material world, you have to study the natural sciences. Then if you want to find in the life sciences, we'll access the life world. It's not surprising that if you start dealing with how do people interact, you have to unpack all the social sciences. And ultimately, if you really want to know the essence of humanity, right? What does it really mean to be human? You have to study the humanities. So students here will notice, what are we just putting up on the board? Oh my God, this is the core curriculum. We didn't make it up, you know? This goes back to Plato, all right? And yet how can you be an wholly educated person if all you have? And so if you just study science, if you're just a STEM person, great. But you have a very incomplete map. There's a lot more going on in the world than you were able to access. And so to come through a Jesuit education, as he did at the University of Paris, young Jesuits have to have exposure to all of these. And therefore right from the beginning, this was the curriculum in Jesuit schools, all right? So the first school is found in 1547. And what links that? So Fairfill, as you know, was gonna say, got the charter in 1942. I'm from Boston, if you haven't figured that out yet. You have a charter in 1942. But because of the war, the prep was able to start. So Fairfill prep started right away. But the university doesn't have its first class until 1947. And they graduate in 1951. So here goes, this is an amazing, here's part two, an amazing story, all right? Jesuit education comes to Round Hill Road. And 75 years later, no one who was part of that original generation could have in a million years fathomed how successful this enterprise would be. And so let me take you through what this enterprise was all about. You continue to model those aspects of Jesuit education, core personalities, the care of the person, everything we do, we do for the greater glory of God. It's never about me, right? The modus, right? Mediocrity has no place in anything that Jesuit education professes to promote. Mediocrity is just to be a shootaway. And ultimately, and we see it from the beginning, but reinforced since the General Congregation 32, you know, if you graduate from here and you're just a great mathematician, we've failed you, all right? You have to be men and women for others. The service of faith, you know, what does it mean unless you go out there and promote justice? So Fairfield, this is part of the DNA of what this institution is all about. You know, not everybody's gonna have the same opinion, but this is part of the DNA of a Jesuit education. And so here it goes, this is an amazing story. We're gonna see a couple of characters back and forth, but this is John McElaney. And John McElaney was the rector of the Jesuit Navician up in Shatterbrook. He is from Woobin, Massachusetts. And the major player here at this point is James Dolan, no relation to Chuck Dolan, right? But James Dolan, James H. Dolan, all New England Jesuits end up having nicknames. So he's James Heavy Dolan, right? And so ultimately, he says, I'd really like, you know, we're getting, believe it or not, we're getting 30 vocations a year. Where are we gonna put all these Jesuits? They've gotta have some jobs. Here we have BC and Holy Cross. We gotta get some new schools. So he applies to the Bishop of, Bishop McAuliffe in Hartford. He said, we'd love to start a new school up in Hartford. Well, he doesn't hear anything back, all right? Jesuits, Diocese of Breeze, they always not on the same page, right? So he is relentless, so he just goes to see them. And McAuliffe already knows something in the air because about 10 years later, all of Connecticut was with the Diocese of Hartford. He knew that they were gonna split off the Diocese of Bridgeport and they were gonna split off Norwich. So there's three dioceses now. And so not having answered them the first time, he said, well, okay, but I give you permission to look around and you can start a school in the Bridgeport area, right? And you're not gonna have Jesuits in my Diocese in Hartford, that really translates that. And so very shrewd, but very political, all right? And so this Father McAlaney is given permission to come down here, it's 1941, and scout out new places, whereas their property's big enough to launch a university. And so he's able to locate the Jennings Estate, Malans, a great estate name, and they negotiate. Well, they negotiate and you can read about this. Go online, everything is digitalized and your digital archives is amazing, right? But this sale goes back and forth, they had it, they didn't have it. And then ultimately, he's able to purchase the Jennings Estate, what is now McAuliffe Hall, $43,879 buys him 76.2 acres in Fairfield County. You can't get a garage in Fairfield County for that, right? And so this is amazing. And so that same year, December 4th, the town of Fairfield repossesses Heartstone Hall for back taxes. And this family, the Lashers Estate, Bellarmine Hall, was available for back taxes. And so the cleric of court says, well, if you're gonna buy McAuliffe Hall, what you're gonna call Jennings Hall, all right? You know, why don't you think about buying the one across the street, which you can pick up for back taxes? So on March 17th, 1942, at the Jesuit Retreat House in Pomford, Connecticut, they had a meeting and the lawyers here will know, they formed a 501C3 and Fairfield College of St. Robert Bellarmine was born. And John McAlaney was the first president, although he's never really president of the university. He's the first president and CEO of the 501C3. And so the Walter Lashers Estate does become available, Bellarmine Hall now, it's $68,500 for 105 acres. Not, Jesuits are notorious for bad real estate deals. This was not one of them, all right? So for $112,000, they pick up 101 acres in Fairfield County. It's incredible. McAuliffe was probably in the nicer mansion at the time. And if you go into Bellarmine now, that gorgeous silver chandelier, that was actually in this building, not in Bellarmine. And so this building, a little secret, I lived in this building the last year the Jesuits owned it. We didn't own it, but we lived there. But literally, 8081, I had a little Anne Frank room up on the third floor here. But the reality is, this building is incredible. And if you have a chance to go through it, you have the Japanese garden down below, but there's so many wonderful aspects of this building. The roof is actually flat on top and you can go, I won't tell students, because you'll find out a way to get there. But I mean, you'll go to the second floor and there's a way to get to the roof. I used to have a lounge chair out there, it was great. But you have a breathtaking view of the Manhattan, whole Manhattan skyline from the roof of Bellarmine. It's just incredible. The summer that we were leaving, I was thrilled. I was the one to go up and down stairs easy. All the older Jesuits were there, but I mean, all the younger Jesuits, like Father Allen, they lived in the dorms, all right? And so, but Mrs. Lasher, the daughter of the original owner, came with her grandchildren. And I took them up to the roof and on the way down, there was a flag on two nails that had obviously been there for 40 years. I said, well, I've never unrolled it, let's unroll it. It was a Union Jack and in the border was the embroidered W.T. Lasher. And so, her grandson's two twins. I said, well, this is obviously yours, it's not ours. But one thing about it, you're gonna open this as a high school building. This is the first Fairfield Prep. And if you went down into the basement, there was an indoor pool, amazing, right? And it had all of these bare-breasted sea nymphs on the wall painted. If you're gonna teach high school boys, this is not a good idea, right? So immediately, the walls were paneled over and all of these rooms were cabanas. And so, it was incredible. And so, the way this worked out, it was incredible. And on the second floor, for example, Mrs. Lasher had a dressing room that was, and you can still see it, it's part of the advancement office now, but it was like incredible, all these lacquered Japanese walls. And it was really an exquisite building. So, Fairfield Prep opened its doors on September 9th in 1942. And now, interestingly enough, they operated for two years and it was called the University Pot of the 501c3 is Fairfield University of St. Robert Bellamon, right? That was the original name. And this is now an alumni hall. I think they haven't renovated it out. This is still in the foyer of alumni hall. This is part of your digital archives. You can get everything there, right? But now, what happened was, the players change. So, the provincial who started all this ball rolling, he becomes the president of this 501c3 and McElaney becomes the provincial. So, they just changed spaces, all right? And so, Dolan, in a sense, becomes really like a first president. He was president of Boston College. He knew what he was getting into. He had experience. And so, he comes down here and does some of the early paperwork. After 42, you have to wait three years so the original charter that allowed Fairfield to grant degrees was issued by the governor in 1945. And this is such an amazing thing. You're gonna need students. So, they bring in Larry Langeth. Who's Larry Langeth? Great friend of mine. He came and he taught physics at Holy Cross. Then he became ordained and then they sent him to dutertionship. And so, in the middle of the war, he starts doing graduate studies in physics at MIT. He wanted to do it at MIT. Because of the war effort, he had to go to Harvard to start his doctorate in physics, right? But the Jesuits being Jesuits, in the middle of the war, one of the Jesuits teaching physics at PrEP was able to become a chaplain. And so, he left to go join the army in the war effort. And so, Larry is just told, leave your PhD program, go teach physics at PrEP. He's here for a little while. He says, oh, we're starting this university. You can be dean. And so, he has, I don't even know what a dean does. But we'll see. He was a really good dean. And he is really one of the major builders of the influences here. So all of a sudden, here is the original faculty. And so, for those of us in the room, this is a lot of familiar faces here. Here is Father Lieber as a young scholastic, like myself. He was here before he was ordained. We have, oops, here is Art Reel. We taught English here for many years while I was here. So, of these 15, I know eight of them really well. Carmen Donnaruma, and has a great history here. Todd, a year at the PrEP before he started at the university. Sadly, when John Orman, we had the funeral for John Orman, many of you recognize, it was the last time I saw Carmen, one of the Alpha Sigma Nu kids I knew really well. I said, oh, come over here. We had a reception afterwards. And I said, I'd like you to meet Professor Donnaruma. He was sitting there with his wife, Louise. And the kid just blurted out. He goes, oh my god, I thought you were dead. And he goes, yeah. He goes, Louise says that a lot too. Chet Steward is here in the Graduate Education for a while. John Murray, who's sort of like the Glee Club. It was like the only thing going on. Some of these other people I knew from, they later went to BC or Holy Cross. Here's Larry Langeth. Here's Heavy Dolan, as it were. Long career teaching English here at BC. And so this is their first faculty. And when I got here in 1980, a lot of these people were still here. So the stories that I'm telling you are right from the horse's mouth. They were there, all right? And it was just, how does this happen? Well, they got permission to start one building. So between the two mansions, they end up going, let me see on the Murray pages here, yeah, okay. So they built Berkman's first. That took a little while. It was the beginning of a long relationship with Fletcher Thompson, the architect, right? By 45, they were able to get the corner house on Barlow and North Benson. That was added for a cool $28,000 with another 18 acres, but unfortunately most of it's wetlands, right? And that was called a rat house because they did a lot of experimentation from the psychology department. And at the time, Father McGrath would sit on the back porch if you can believe this, with a rifle shooting rats coming out of the swamp. Yikes, right? So they built Berkman's with a $200,000 loan from the Newton-Waltham Bank. So I grew up in Waltham. This is my parents' bank. What a small world this is. But why did they do it? Well, they got $200,000 at one and a half percent because when Dolan was the president of Boston College, the reality is he put all BC's money in the Newton-Waltham Bank in 1928 and saved them from collapse. And so people with long memories are good friends, right? And so this groundbreaking starts in 47 and they start putting up Berkman's, right? So what happens in 47, right? The war is over. And literally, Dolan has big plans. Big plans, really big plans, right? This is from the cover insert of the 1955 yearbook. This is the plan for the campus. Here's 42 Gothic buildings. And here's the, we have the quad here for the law school and here's the quad for the medical school and then here's the graduate school and this was thinking big, right? And so even at that point in 1947, Bridgeport Junior College or the Junior College of Connecticut, which would eventually become U of B announces that, wow, with the GI Bill, this is like too easy. We're going for your college. And so here is we're just starting to think about opening Fairfield. We have a new neighbor that wants to start a four-year college right down the street, right? There'll be more. But ultimately, so on February 3rd, Dolan announces that Fairfield would open in September and it would open for freshmen only. So they were able to get a lot of really good quality students, most of whom wanted to commute. Most of them liked the fact that tuition was $200 because it was paid for by the GI Bill. And so the quality of the initial students was very, very high, right? So in that first class, there were 303 students, all male. 60 were placed with local families. When I got here, they were called hostess homes, right? Hostess homes. That's quaint, all right? Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't so. But ultimately, we didn't have any dorms. So those who wanted to live here, they lived in hostess homes, right? 121 were World War II veterans, which made a different kind of class to teach. And ultimately, accreditation was received in 1949, which enabled us to think about giving us degrees. So in 1950, while the students are now juniors, McElaney is taken out as provincial and made the bishop in Jamaica. So Dolan goes back to be acting provincial. And we're going to see that Edmund Fitzgerald, who was then at the time a dean here, was made the acting president for a year. And then he would ultimately replace the acting provincial Dolan and he becomes provincial. So if you notice a theme here, if your name is Fitzgerald, your chances of becoming president at this university are very high. So he's just the acting president. But there weren't a lot of activities. Simon Harrick, the senior, did music with Father Murray. Mr. Lieber was sort of the first track coach or cross country. Basketball was done by Joe Dunn, baseball by Joe Broadley. So in June 12, 1951, there was the first graduation. 209 young men received their degrees and then a couple honorary degrees, a couple of master's degrees. But then all of a sudden, what happened to them? Ironically, 10 of them go to graduate school. A lot of them go to graduate. 19 became lawyers, went to law school. 12 of this original class became doctors and social sciences, humanities, what not, in graduate school. And 51 were taken into the service because we were in the middle of Korea. So in a sense, what happens next is the first real Fitzgerald. He's the real president. So Joe comes in, he's gonna be president from 51 to 58. He replaces Dolan and he starts the processes of accreditation. And so all of the right things are happening. We get accredited, I still say we, I proudly say we, but we get accredited by the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. We get accredited by the Association of American Colleges. And ultimately, Joe realized that if we're gonna break free, we have to start building dorms. And so in 1954, Loyola opens. If you go in that main door today, the Ignatian Residential College, you'll see that great rooms, 2,100 square feet. That was the campus center, right? And later morphed into student services. And then when we got the Ignatian Residential College back, it turned out to be the great room again. That was the original campus center, right? But ultimately, some of the great stories here. We build Gonzaga, and we have Bill Curley here, Pittman from way back, you know, Gonzaga Pitts, you know? But, you know, if you take that notion of what this campus was gonna look like, you realize 1960s blonde brick was a lot cheaper, right? And so rather than the Gothic, and so the best story of Gonzaga, if you go to that far side, most of you know it by now, you have those nine rows of raised brick. And Larry Lange told me the story. He says, you know, the Bricklayer's Union guy, the chief supervises it, you know, this is a really boring wall, you know? And I can give you something that will make it a little jazzy. What do you mean? He goes, well, Father, I'm not Catholic, I'm a Lutheran, but I know a little bit about Gregorian chant. And so we can raise these bricks in such a way to reflect the motif of Gregorian chant. And so if you know these nine lines, K-R-E-E-L-E-S-O-N, Chris Day in the middle of the three Kir-i-a's. And the thing that did it for Father Lange, he goes, we can do this, it'll be interesting and it won't cost you anything. Bingo, yeah, I like that idea, right? And so Joe continued to put in Coneetius, as a modern sign, but what the real interesting part of Konishish Hall was, they built this, right, and their stairs to the left were the stairs to nowhere. For 40 years, there were stairs going up to a meadow. There was nothing there. But we knew something was going there. So those stairs got in there. And so Joe becomes part of this. It's really important. But all of a sudden, scary, the bottom of the basket almost falls out because enrollment starts to plummet. Why did they plummet? Well, three factors. Most of the people on the GI Bill were graduating. And so in the late 50s, there was a drop in numbers. Also, too, the depression birth rate was very low for obvious reasons. And so now they're coming of college age. They're not ready to be here. And so ultimately, a lot of people were coming out of high school. They had to go to Korea. And so for those three reasons, enrollment plummets. But ultimately, Connecticut had asked all the schools to start doing teacher training. And so now we have something we didn't plan on in the beginning. But graduate school starts to really come into the fore. And so those numbers kind of balance each out. By 1955, we had 955 students. 634 were undergraduates. 291 were graduate students. In February 55, the accreditation came through and said, like, the programs are really, really good. But when you look at your board of trustees, too much power is concentrated in too few hands. Of the seven trustees, five were administrators, two faculty members, and they were all Jesuits. But you can imagine being an administrator and reporting to the board who was you. That's a really cozy arrangement, right? And the accreditation said, you've got to think about this. This is not a good idea. But in 1955, when Gonzaga opened, enrollments were now at 957. 400 of the 924 undergraduates were now residential students. And in a sense, in 1956, the professionalization came when John Barone, famous name of the story, was the chemistry chair. And he became the first person to bring in the AAUP. And so that was a real professionalization. When Konishis Hall was built, that was also the library. And so everything is multitasking. And so he stays in office, Joe stays in office until 1958 when he's replaced by Jim Fitzgerald. His nickname, the Tower of Power. He was six with six, right? But he was a very shy guy and he wasn't really into being president. He did some, well, see, he did some building. But his office was the desk in his bedroom, right? In Bellarmine Hall. And if he wanted to see the president, he would meet you in the parlor. There was no presidential office and he really didn't like talking to a lot of people, right? And he had a very, very shy voice. But Joe comes in, Jim, James now, it's really amazing. There were 52 faculty and 23 Jesuits, 29 laymen. But that story is incredible because ultimately, if you have 23 people on your faculty who are working for room and board, overhead for faculty salaries is pretty low. And so part of this equation here is because you had all these Jesuits here, they didn't, they basically, they wore a cask. They didn't cost you anything. They had room and board provided. And every weekend, they had to go and say mass and parishes because the stipend money went right into this new institution. So the sacrifice of these extraordinary men was really edifying. I mean, they really saw what they were doing as very, very important. So in 1962, Campion Hall will open, right? And we'll see. Think of that wonderful image of the master plan. We get a quonset hut, right? Because we need a basketball arena, right? We need some sports. We need some place to go. So a quonset hut really wasn't what Dolan had in mind, but it's still there and it's still functioning. And so you look at this and in 1963, Walter Curtis is now the Bishop of Bridgeport and he comes to them and he has just started a capital campaign for a new high school. He puts pressure on the Jesuits and it depends on who you talk to. Jesuits had their own story. Why did the Bishop do this? But if you really know the story, the bottom line is he said, I'd love Fairfield to be coed. And the Jesuits at the time said, Rome won't let us be coed because the scholastics will all run off and get married. That was the argument. It wasn't a really good argument, but it was the argument, right? And so what was to be a high school, sacred hut, Walter Curtis says, well, if you won't go coed, I'll stop my own university. So now in the first 20 years, you have not only UB, you have another institution. So in a small pool, this is amazing. So Fairfield survives this, right? And ultimately it is really a story. So here we have Campion Hall and I'm glad Janet Krause is here because this isn't just another dorm. You'll notice on the bottom, these windows look a little different than these because this is the humanities building. When I got here in 1980, philosophy, theology, and philosophy, theology, and English were all here. And I shared an office right here with Janet and about five other people, right? And the reality was I distinctly remember a conversation where I'm sitting with a philosophy student. I said, like, there's all sorts of grammar problems with your essay. So what do you mean? I said, well, look at this. You start off with a split infinitive. And they said, what's an infinitive? I turned to Janet and said, don't they teach English in English anymore, Janet? And yet the worst part of having your office there is this wasn't a lot of recreation space. So maybe some of you were there. They would throw water on the tile floor. They had carpet upstairs, but the tile floor would get flooded with water on Sunday night and they would have slip-in slides with the students, right? You'd come in in the morning, someone had put their term paper under your thing. Your office was under two inches of water, right? But you'll notice here, here's the door on the other side, you can still see it from the quad. There was another exit on the other side, which is now the RA's room, right? But when you went there on Sunday night, all the biology students would be dissecting their sand sharks there. So when you walked in on Monday morning, the formaldehyde was just everywhere. This is flying a plane while you're trying to drive it, right? And so this is all just happening, right? But the thing that turns things around, ultimately, an amazing story. Say like, I teach at Fairfield, where's that, I never heard of it. Suddenly, the national TV show GE College Bowl comes in 1962 and these upstarts from Fairfield, Connecticut, from where? Fairfield, Connecticut, right? They defeat Creighton, the Jesuit school founded in 1878. They get invited back for a second week. They take down Southern Illinois, Carbondale, right? They get invited back for a third week. They take out Clemson, which has been around since 1889. Carbondale's been around since 1869. And so here's a school that's barely, not even 20 years old yet. And suddenly, everybody's saying, well, where's this Fairfield place? And so it puts Fairfield on the map. I refer to this as a BC grad. This is our Doug Flutie moment, right? Right? And in May, it really put Fairfield, it's like, wow, you know, this is a competitive school and it's run on a shoestring. When John Ryan was, he came amok of one of the provincials in Boston. He was running the continuing ed school at BC. One of the provincials didn't like what he was doing so he got sent to Fairfield and he was kind of crushed, because I am leaving BC to go to Fairfield. And one of the Jesuits there, trying to reassure him, says, well, John, you know, they say this new Fairfield, it's just Nichols and Dimes operation. That's just not true. It's just Nichols, right? And so this really said, well, if it's that kind of an operation, it's doing pretty well and now it has national attention, right? And so in a sense, this is something. We're getting more and more recognition. But Fitzgerald himself had a little bit of a vision and really declared that he wanted to, what he called the New Horizon program, calling for a new science building and a new student center. It was an interesting time. John Kennedy had been elected president. It was okay to be Catholic, you know, an American. John the 23rd was in. They were talking about a lot with the Second Vatican Council. It was a real era. It was an exciting time. And so Fairfield's in the midst of this. But we look at the curriculum, it's still very, very heavily, to mystic. And now I see some faces here, you were probably here for those curriculum wars, but I mean like changing the curriculum. Where, you know, if you want to major in math, you don't have to have eight courses in philosophy. You don't have to have nine courses in theology. And so they begin to work on this and ultimately implemented over a number of years. So they really work on what is now the curriculum and the beginnings of the core. But the next guy to come in was really the game changer. Bill McGuinness comes in. Bill McGuinness is like the first real president. He had been a dean of the business school at Boston College. He had a PhD in marketing from NYU. He came in with a vision. And in the middle of, we're talking about if this is the era, his introductory address was entitled The Religious University in a Pluralistic Society. Wow, he hit it right from the very beginning. And so the first thing he did was he moved the president's office from Bellamon to Cunicious. So he took a big, that back, it was a big lecture hall in Cunicious and that became the presidential office. And the presidential office became very, very professional under Bill. He started to reach out to the community and ultimately he says of the 1964, 90% of the students were all from the tri-state area. So we're gonna have to build more dorms if we wanna do this. All of the board was still all Jesuit and all internal to Fairfield. So big things happen in the summer of 1963. Joan Walters comes as the first woman to join the faculty. She has a Harvard PhD, not too shabby, right? It's not like amazing. And then she taught in the summer and Dorothy Schaefer came in as to teach, I see some math majors over here, remember Dorothy Schaefer, she started teaching in the fall of 1963. So we basically are having this. And so he builds Bano, he starts building the Science Center, as we'll see. Because of a grant in 1963, Title I Higher Education Facilities grant, the university receives $243,000 to build Bano and $500,000 to build Nicelius Library. This is great, or maybe not. We're gonna build a campus center, this is great, or maybe not. What happened? Well, a group from the ACLU decided that, religious schools shouldn't be getting federal funds. And so they take us to court. And the reality is we lose at the district level. This is serious, suddenly this great experiment. And McGinnis was a real gambler and this is a gutsy experience. And ultimately this whole thing could go south. You can imagine taking a million dollars out of Fairfield at that point, which didn't have a million dollars to give. There's no endowment to speak of. And so ultimately this goes all the way to the Supreme Court, it's always in the New York Times. I mean, again, Fairfield's getting a lot of plus. It wasn't just us, it was, they went after a number of the schools in the area. They went after Albertus Magnus, for example, and Harris was there at the time, Sacred Heart was part of this. But Fairfield really took the most of this. And ultimately Edward Williams, of Williams and Conley as a Holy Cross grad, he argued before the Supreme Court and Fairfield prevailed. If it hadn't, it would have been a very, very different story. And so in 1969, Robert Bellaman, St. Robert Bellaman was taken off the legal name and it became just Fairfield University. And so in a sense McGinnis, undeterred by this court battle, starts building. So Regis goes up in 1965. Jokes goes up in 68, but it's called Northeast. And so ultimately, we'll get to that in a minute. It's called Northeast. So ultimately there's Northeast, right? And here he is, so we build then Cosskett and Claver using great architectural plans for schools in Florida. Watch who was there. Yeah. They were cheap, right? We had some heating problems, but I mean like, they look nice, right? But anyway, so that's happening. And then separate incorporation happens in 1970. And separate incorporation is literally, the Jesuit community becomes its own 501 C3 and is distinct from the university. So the provincial now has no authority at Fairfield. It's all vested in the board. And McGinnis had started a 30 person advisory board, but now we have a real board of trustees, which includes Tim Lehmann and eight Jesuits. And David Jewett, the vice president of First National Bank became our first board chair. McGinnis professionalizes the operation. He invites John Barone to become the vice president. Jim Coughlin, the Jesuit becomes the dean of academics and basically the first AVP. Bill Schimp takes over student service. Harry Huss, a Jesuit becomes our first treasurer. And they even have Audrey Thompson, a woman that gets to be part of the inner circle and she directs special events. McGinnis becomes a real active leader in Bridgeport, like a president would. And he starts soliciting money. The academic council is formed. They have a faculty handbook. And originally the faculty handbook hit the wall right away because someone I knew very well, Paul would know from your department, Gus Cafferty. Father Gus Cafferty decides that he doesn't want to be Father Gus Cafferty anymore, so he leaves the Jesuits and McGinnis fires him. Well, you can't really do that. And the AVP reminds Father McGinnis that you can't really do that, right? And so that basically McGinnis backs down, but that's just the secular religious dichotomy is really exciting to play this back and forth. So ultimately there's, we keep building dorms and it was the 60s. So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but I mean, here we are in the 60s. And so one of the big issues in 1965 was the index of forbidden books was still in the Konishish Library. And it was on the basement floor, that was the library. And Father Small was a librarian, to make it even worse, he had it covered in chicken wire, this little cage. And these are the books that you can't read, right? And they're all the books that you wanna read, right? But anyway, anything that's anti-clerical, lasciviousness, anything that's heretical was put on the index. And so one night the students broke in and they, believe it or not, they reshelft all the books where they should be, right? And this was fabulous. They were a year ahead of their time, the church destroyed the list, they took it away in 1966, they abolished it, it was silly, right? But in a sense, this was really important. The black students took over Xavier Hall and echoed many of the same concerns that they echoed last spring when we had the Black Lives Matters. They want more faculty of color, they want more students of color. And the reality is, McGinnis was able to talk to them and say this is exactly what we want, it's not as easy as you think. Because the competition is incredible. And so in a sense, the big thing that happened, here we are now in 1969, 70, the student, FUSA, still FUSA, they decided for the spring concert they're going to invite the doors, right? This is Sleepy Fairfield. And so the fire department comes in and said we will only allow you to have this on campus if you have one parking space for every two people you expect. Well, there wasn't that much parking in the town of Fairfield, right? And so the students blame McGinnis. And so literally, here they are, in 1968, they dedicate the yearbook to McGinnis. In 1970, they want him impeached and thrown off campus. You know? And so it's just hysterical, it's the 60s. It's also, we won't go into the weeds here, but everything that was happening everywhere else was also happening here. And McGinnis was a great dialogue partner with them and Coughlin was a great dialogue partner with them, Jim Coughlin as we'll see. But they were tense days. So on May 4th, well in 1970, Kent State comes and everything kind of goes on hold. This is real. No, it's, Vietnam is there, but also, and then also we have the tripartite governance. Everything in the 60s was, you know, students, faculty, administration. So everything has to be tripartite. So that works out. And then the big thing in 1970 is they go coed, all right? And it was really, it wasn't so much. So financial issue, it was like the quality of students. I mean, the numbers were going down. So the chance to get women in here, it just raised the profile of academics to its best thing. It didn't help when an article about Fairfield appeared in the New York Times and says, it's a 10 building campus located in a sunken valley surrounded by a parking lot. We have work to do here, right? And so literally, twice in the 60s, he was doing a great job, but they ran two deficit spending years. And so ultimately they have $700,000 in debt and McGinnis gets invited to go to USF. And so he leaves for USF. Jim Coughlin comes in a year for acting president for the year between him and the next Fitzgerald, Tom Fitzgerald, who comes in, right? And so in a sense, before I get to that, let me just read a letter to you very briefly to tell you what was Fairfield like. Here's a letter from some of you may remember, King Dykeman from the philosophy department. And he writes to David Jewett, the president of the board, and he writes with a complaint. He says, you know, dear Mr. Chairman, I have this complaint about certain program here. And so it would be obvious to me to bring this logically to carry my complaint to the actual director of the program which is Father Jim Coughlin. I did not receive satisfaction here. I can take it to the general faculty whose chairman is appointed by the president of the university. The chairman of the faculty is Father Jim Coughlin. Since I seem blocked here, I can take the matter forward to the dean of the college, but here again the man is Father Jim Coughlin. I could go up to the dean and to the academic vice president who was also Father Coughlin. Or to the acting president of the university who was also Father Coughlin. Or to the trustee that I know personally who was also Father Coughlin, okay? And I'm not arguing with your choice to make him acting president. But I am about the, you know, the Gilbert and Sullivan style of the administration here to create this choice. We have created the Grand Pubar. And so I would like to recommend that you at least appoint a temporary faculty chairman and someone to be dean of the college. P.S., my name will be going up for rank and tenure. This spring, and Father Coughlin is also chairman ex officio and single most effective member. But I do think this is a really good idea, right? But anyway, so Fitz comes in and Fitz is just a delightful guy. And his nickname is the Silver Fox. He comes in as a real classy guy. He had been AVP at Georgetown and a dean and chairman of classics. So he knew what he was doing. He came here and the first thing he has to do is take out this $700,000 deficit. So he was in the habit of walking around turning out lights, you know? A lot of people didn't like that. He was also a habit of calling all the vice presidents at 8.30 in the morning and saying, I'm at my desk, why aren't you at yours? That didn't help her. But I think one of the graffiti that we saw on campus when he took over sums it all up. And it says, trying in fake Latin, in hawk for plenty, right? The school was deep in deficit, right? And so he aged two, in 73 and 74, he had a tuition increase and he was able to pull this out. The Jesuits finally start leaving Xavier where they were living and they built, the building wasn't a Fairfield building, but they built the first part of Ignatius House down there which was called the Swamp House, right? And so they leave some of the Jesuits on the fourth floor but it's not all done yet. But the new demands required, we need an infirmary, all right? The infirmary was Kirk, Nurse Kirk, Mary Kirk. And so if you had health issues, you went to see Ms. Kirk. If you had psychological issues, I guess you went to see Ms. Kirk, you know? And she was like the poobar, I mean, she was the health service, all right? And yet it was amazing. And so, you know, Bill Schiff and Henry Carroll, you know, introduced concepts like dorm damage, a new concept, right? That wasn't too popular. And Campus Ministry now reports to the president directly. At that point, Dennis Como and Pasky were the two campus ministers. And Pasky, because of this experience, ironically, he was the one who was the founder of the Jesuit Refugee Service. Father Rupe told him and said, like, we should have something, you know, the both people in Vietnam is really causing, we should have a Jesuit Refugee Service. And he sent Pasky, he says, go to Mogadishu and do something. So he went to create the JRS with no budget and no blueprint and no business plan. That was the way things happen in those days. So in we get, Fitz comes. I remember walking with him, I was a novice, walking on this field along a chalk line. And he says, Tom McGrath from the psych department has all of these ideas and we're going to do a 30-year ground lease here. And the savings banks of Southern Connecticut are gonna build us this fabulous new facility. And that happened, you know? And when it was, it was a five-star executive hotel, basically, and conference center. And it was mostly who could use it, but IBM and GE, you know? I was saying to Paul earlier, it was like the chairman of the philosophy department, oh, we'll have the metaphysics group there, you know? And we got like $75 to go to a conference. They were like $350 a night for a room, you know? This was high level. But that gave us the beginning. And so I remember walking here and then he built, this became the center for, Center for Financial Studies, right? Ultimately, he works in the nursing. And so Phyllis Porter comes in, really professionalizes this. Dave Flynn comes in, starts doing great stuff in admissions, right? And then I remember, believe it or not, walking in this building before it was even half done and Father Fitzgerald pointed to me and said, and this will be where the racquetball courts will be. It's like, oh good, that will come in for future reference, right? But ultimately, we had, in 1978, an influx of students. We had students living in the Bridgeport Holiday Inn. And it was just a wild time, but now Fairfield was really coming into its own. And so ultimately, we get into the modern era and really the modern era, all right? And when Al Kelly came here in 1978, he inherited a really pretty fine financial machine. Tom Fitz had done a pretty good job. And so we were really stable and Al was able to be the visionary that he was, right? When I look through this, my first year here was his second year. He said, I have a conference up at Bentley. I know you're from Waltham. You can drive up with me up and back in the same day, but you can tell me a little bit about yourself or whatever. And I said, Al, as long as we're here, why don't we leave by the other side of town and I'll take you through Brandeis? Because Brandeis was founded in the same year as Fairfield. And so Brandeis being a national Jesuit philanthropy school was at that point they had $60 million in the endowment. And I remember that at that point we had six, right? And so what is this story is incredible because we have here George Diffley, who's the architect of all this, but the reality is they did the kind of fundraising they did, all our alumni were basically alive, right? There were no wills in the States, right? Most of our graduates hadn't got to the corner office yet. They were too young, right? And we didn't see that kind of stuff. So George and Al did this all basically on parents' giving and friends of the university. It's extraordinary. I was on the board someplace else and the Jesuit who was the president of Xavier and Cincinnati says, how did they do it up there? And so I lived in Cincinnati and Indian Hill is like Greenwich, right? And I said, imagine Jim Hoffman's name. Jim, imagine your school was surrounded by 50 Indian Hills, right? That's the friendships that Al and George cultivated. And so Al comes in and right away resolves one of the problems and starts building the first of three phases of townhouses. Why was this necessary? Go figure it out. Clam gym, oh yeah. So when I got here in 1980 we had 950 students living at the beach, right? At that point when Labor Day came they just threw away the key. It was just students. But then during the Reagan years the McMansions started coming in and you didn't want your little kids living next to a house full of kids and only four unrelated people were allowed to live in each house, right? And so did oh, right? But now there was a town gown thing going and Al is genius. I mean, you had to build a more attractive type of residence and without the RAs coming but literally the townhouses were the great way to do it. So it happened in three phases, right? He started a whole notion of a mission statement. If we're gonna go forward you have to know who you are. And that was a big, big fight. It wasn't a fight but it was okay. You want to grow the endowment, right? Ultimately he brings the Jesuits move into the new Ignatius house. That wasn't a university building. The Jesuits built it and owned it, right? But then he really professionalizes things and renovates Bellarmine to its current state today. But that's the president. So it was a sense that this is the real deal. And all of this is happening while you're flying the plane, right? Ultimately he builds, you know, this was the faculty office building, very creative name, right? The faculty office building. But finally the stairs to somewhere go somewhere, right? And so it goes up to that. And the business school was on the second floor. That's part of the whole thing. He revives Alpha Sigma Nu in 1981, right? And ultimately it's still a way to go. He acquires the convent property, right? We're gonna see. He builds the chapel. I mean, this is like a building a year. This is an extraordinary story, right? And then ultimately you don't just get money to build a building. Once you build a building it comes online. You have to operate, right? And so that raises your line. Finally we get an art center that's one of the most beautiful places around. And since it's bigger than some Broadway theaters it allows us to bring a lot of new friends in from Westport who had no relationship to the university at all. I mean, suddenly this is happening. He buys this house ultimately was built as a wedding present for the son of the Jennings family. And so when he was married this was his own little mansion, right? And ultimately we end up getting the whole thing, right? And then a $25 million gift from Chuck Doan. And suddenly this is a major, major gift. At that time it was a major, major gift for any university thanks to Father Kelly and George here. But it's just extraordinary. And so literally we buy the savings bank out of their last seven years or 30 year lease. We buy them out of their last seven years. And so we not only now have a business school we have a first rate business facility, right? Al brings on the Bridgeport School of Engineering, all right? Which has existed since the 20s. And so now we repurpose McCulloch Hall. And ultimately it's my favorite story. We get a new incredible library from Joe Domenna who's a young grad, right? And ultimately it's so classy when you look at this great look and this great staircase there. But the only downside of this is that it came out around the year Titanic came out. And a lot of the students say like, wow, look at this staircase. It's just like Titanic. I don't think that's what the architect was going for, right? But it is, it's a gorgeous place to study. And now you have facilities to match your aspirations. It's really incredible. We start at 1992. We now have 17 varsity sports. And now we have the background to help them make that case, right? And ultimately you get a new campus center. This is extraordinary. And finally, Justly named after Barone as the FOB. Justly is named after Donnaruma, common Donnaruma. We start Alumni Hall. So Janet's over here. She gets a new home. And Fairfield is so much now in the mainstream that we as an institution know all too closely what 9-11 meant, 14. And this is where you saw what the Fairfield family really meant because I went to a lot of these funerals and they were just packed with alumni and teachers and administrators. And this was a devastating year for the whole country. But this was, Fairfield has really arrived. Eddie Condon lived in Trumbull. And it turns out that the guy at the end of his street was in charge of taking away a lot of the debris from the ground zero. And so he asked the guy at the end of his street, could he get a piece of a girder or something like that? And then the university architects fashioned this into what it is today. But it's one of the most moving 9-11 things I've seen. Ultimately Phi Beta Kappa comes to us in 1995. So of the 2,800 institutions of higher education in the United States, only 284 have a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. This is huge. And this says something about where Fairfield is. And no one could doubt that we have really arrived. Jeff Von Ox is joining us tonight, comes in to replace Father Kelly, and continues the spread of building. So we have a new visitor center and admissions and office. And ultimately, we found out and the data told us that although the family like going to admissions office in Bellarmine, a lot of the kids got kind of spooked. It was a little too formal. And so we moved the admissions office down here. And so this continues a new pathway into campus. A certain provincial came to see Father and said, 13 Jesuits now live in Ignatius House. It was built for 40. I'll give you six months to get your act together and feet on the ground. And we're going to come and talk to you. And we'll talk about what you can, I'm thinking you can build a new university conference center in which the Jesuits will live for 12 years or so. We still have Harrison House across the street. We still have other property. And so we worked out a very cordial deal where this becomes a university building. And then what was the Jesuit house? And over here is the original Swamp House. And this was built in 78. The rest of this came in 1981. But again, it served our purposes. It served the university purposes. It was a real win-win. I'm very grateful for Jeff for that incredible logistic cooperation for making that happen. It was good for the province. And it was, I think, great for the school. Ultimately, he continues the building. We have village apartments. We have other new on quad apartments. Rafferty, Bill Curly's over here. That was his partner, Cohen and Rafferty. He ran the company himself. But that is a whole new way of really recognizing varsity athletics have come. And ultimately, the end of the science center and ultimately brings us to a new recreation center, an upbeat, really exciting. I'm looking forward to going down and seeing it. And then ultimately, we have our new president, interim president, Lynn Dabbington. So what's the model of the second part of the story? The model is here, that you should be incredibly proud to be part of the Fairfield University family. No school, I think. This is one of the great success stories in American higher education today. From 1942, when it was nothing, to where you are today is absolutely extraordinary. And our graduates, I know, because I taught a lot of them. But I mean, we have a MacArthur Award. We have 62 Fulbright. We have people all over Wall Street. We have people in higher education. We have several people now college presidents. I've taught a lot of kids who are college professors. You can get as good an education at Fairfield as you can get anywhere. It's just extraordinary what this institution has. And it's all the hard work of the people, a lot of you in this room, but people who, the Majors, who really just gave everything to this place. The future might be a little different. And we can't be naive. Here's Joni Walters, right? And here's Don Ross. But I mean, today it takes a little bit more to supply teachers than a piece of chalk in a double helix. It's incredibly complicated. The business model of higher education is really, really different. It would be naive to think that athletics is just about here's a jersey and a pair of shorts. Go play rugby. The fact is that Paul, the coach, was also a history professor. The hockey team was doing very well. Jon McCarthy's here tonight. The coach is also the chairman of the psych department. And also, tennis was my chair. Joe Grassi was also the chair who did this part time. Athletics is so completely different. You had the novelists. Beer is a little bit more than 25 cents now. I've date myself. It's before the current, what they call it, the grape or whatever it is, the sea grape. This is the original. And then as we were talking before dinner, in an age when risk management is all, you can't have an orientation event when you grease a 30-foot pole and have kids go up. And then when they fall off and break their neck, say, I didn't know that would happen. And Kanishas, Joe McDonald always tells the story. One of the Jesuit presidents was saying, it was a typical weekend. I bailed some kids out of jail Monday morning. All the faculty complained that they're not paid enough. And then I sit down for three meetings with lawyers. They say, and it is true, the lawyers run the place. Signed Peter Kanishas, 1556. And so literally, the phrase, new or should have known, covers the grease pole. But end. So this is part three. And I'll leave you. This won't be too much longer. But I mean, this is one of the most powerful statements. In short, this is Alfred North-Whitehead. And cut down, it basically says, we live in an age where for the last 2,000 years, we have labored under the assumption that we will basically give to our children the same world that we inherited from our parents. We are living in the first generation of human history for which this assumption is false. He was reacting more to the World War I technology. But if this could be said of any time in history, we are now, what's happening? Things are changing so fast. And so I'm going to give you a quick, scary tour. And this will end my remarks. The digital divide, I mean, how we approach learning is vastly changing. Young people don't learn the way we learn. I had a meeting the other day with all these people on big data. No one had a piece of paper. No one had a pen. Everybody had some kind of machine. And so what's that? What's the classroom look like? Ultimately, the classroom has to be global. The world is my classroom. Fearfield is my school. And so ultimately, how can these new structures help us to promote justice and overcome all sorts of inequalities? The contemporary world is now more complex, more fragmented, and yet more interdependent than ever. The crisis of contemporary intellectuals is information does not equal knowledge, as we see with fake news. Knowledge is certainly not wisdom. And knowledge, when we're talking about wisdom, so what we really need is a connectivity. And Jesuits have been at this since the very beginning. Here's the Jesuit relations. We're in 112 countries. Wherever Jesuits went, they had to send letters back to Rome. And therefore, we have exquisite archives that detail what was going on in this first multinational corporation. And so we know what's being realized. But here's the thing. In 2008, eight zettabytes, that's 8 times 10 to the 21, of new data was created. That's more than the last 5,000 years. What does this mean? Most of the material that when you go to a technical school, if you're a freshman, by the time you're a junior, it's going to be obsolete. And that's amazing. So this is, I'm leaving you with more questions than answers. Currently, the population of the world stands at close to 7.3 billion. By the time the current undergraduates are adults in their prime, 250, that number will be 10 billion. Where are you going to put another 3 billion people? What does that mean in terms of sustainability, in terms of adequate food supplies, in terms of drinkability, drinkable water, and living space? What kind of tensions, geopolitically, are going to happen when you add 300 people to a planet that's already strained? Current studies estimate that over the next 15 years, upwards of 57% of the jobs currently done will disappear. They'll be replaced by automation and robots. Potentially, this will affect over 80 million Americans. No politician wants to touch this with a 10-foot pole. I was in Boston recently and rented a car. And you had to get an easy pass because there are no cash lanes anymore in Massachusetts. And so what happened to those thousands of people who work 24-7 on every exit on the mass pike? Where are they working now? TSA, probably, but don't get me started. So anyway, a new technical literacy. How are we going to change this into our curriculum? A new technical literacy. You can't go into the world in the 24th century and not know anything about coding. You need some data literacy, bioinformatics. You're getting bombarded with data. What does it all mean? And ultimately, the best managers will be the very competent data people who have human skills. And so we're still back to that core. You can't manage people unless you know how to manage people. It's not about managing competencies. It's about managing people. Spend 90% of your time on 10% of the people. Trust me, I know. So if Plato wanted to create offices and gentlemen, for which that was his end goal and created the Trivium and the Quadrivium and all those other steps to get it, imagine agile, adaptable, and creative students who come together to build a more just, sustainable world, advancing, and not marginalize by ever changing technologies. How do you use these technologies, rather than feel like you're being left out? So if that's your end goal, your challenge is to create a curriculum that achieves this, that produces these kinds of students. Your fearful education must prepare students for jobs that do not yet exist, where you will use technology that has yet to be invented to solve problems you don't know you're going to have. That's the future. That's exactly the future. I brought my dean's advisory council through the engineering lab at Loyola the other day. And all of a sudden, the engineering director put what I thought was a stopwatch in my hand and said, don't drop it. It's $35,000. Oh my god, what is it? It's a pacemaker. And they're made in three companies around the world. And someone who does risk management on my team said, what are those three companies doing to avoid hacking? Who knew? You can hack the telemetry in a pacemaker. And it had been on homeland, the TV. But I mean, who knew you're going to have that kind of a problem? And yet it's a big problem, bigger than you know. And so ultimately, this is a kairos moment. A new paradigm is already shaping the way in which the academy's role is being carried out. Will fearful parents students to be intelligent agents of change on the cutting edge of human activity? Or will they and you consequently miss out on this transformation opportunity? I see Fitzpatrick's here. Jim is such a part of this history. I can't not close my remarks by acknowledging your presence here and the presence of so many faculty members here. You've been preparing students fabulously for 75 years. And my money is on you. But the ball is in your court. But I can tell you one thing, Ignatius is very pleased with you. Thank you much. So we'll take a few questions. I want to see if we can get a photograph. Thank you, Tom. And I'm sure you all have lots of questions for Tom. But we're going to take one minute's break because I need to have Tom take a photograph with Doug Ray and Dan Kosaki and one or two of his students. And then so you think about your questions for a minute. And if Tom and Dan and Doug and the students can come over here, we'll have a couple of microphones. So stick your hand up if you have a question or a comment. And we'll go from there. So two minutes. The photograph being taken on the left here is a photograph of our two Bellarmine scholars with a bunch of the students that they have brought together in the Canisius Academy to debate weighty issues connected to the mission and identity of our institution. So you have Dan Kosaki from the Religious Studies Department and Father Doug Ray who teaches, who works in campus ministry and is also actually not Father Doug Ray yet, on his way to being Father Doug Ray. And they're a pretty picture. And she's only taking 15 shots before. Great, so thank you very much. So we now have an opportunity to question Tom Regan or to challenge him or to correct him. So if you have a comment or a question, raise your hand and we'll give you a microphone. Look who's here, John. Don't be shy. There we go, right at the back here. Hi, Father. Thank you for allowing us to be in your classroom again. Do you see a new emerging financial paradigm coming forward in the next 10, 15 years to financially support a university like Fairfield? I serve on several college boards right now. And the reality is this business plan is really kind of broken. You can't continue to go up 5% and expect middle class families to be able to afford higher education. So other schools are starting to announce some kind of three-year program. I think a big question mark is the future of higher ed is really, really up for grabs right now. And I think some of the brighter minds are saying we have to reformulate a new kind of plan. And so whether we're going to get more infusion from the government or whether we're going to get more infusion from partnership with industry, something has to happen. And the professorate is just totally changing. And I don't always think for the better. Tenure track faculty really are necessary for scholarship and advancing the agenda. But it may look very, very different 10 years from now than it does today. Hello, Father. Thanks for the talk. You're most welcome. What happened with the football team? I think it was like 1998. 2003, if you want to be here. I will tell you an exact quote. I was sitting there one Saturday afternoon. Al Kelly was the president. Father Bill McGinnis was in town for a wedding. And the notice went up on the board that we were going to start football. And the notice said, Fairfield will be joining a league, a cost containment football league. I was reading the paper and I could hear McGinnis laughing, chortling outside. I was like, cost containment football? What an oxymoron. And so it was an idea that started when they thought the male-female ratio, I mean, when women came in, they were 11%, 10 years later, they're 51%. And so they wanted to see if they could even those stats. So that's the same time we started the School of Engineering, thinking we're going to get more men. And football will get more men. And so it seemed like a plan at the time. And it just became prohibitively expensive. So that was a financial decision. I lived in Loyola at the time. And not only did they take out football, but the expense, Dr. McCarthy's here. The hockey team thought, oh, they're going to cut football. We're going to finally get our rink on campus. Well, that didn't happen either. They cut football. But trying to curtail cost and contain cost was a hallmark of the, we don't want to spend money. We don't have to spend. And although that sounded like a good idea, the revenue wasn't coming in to offset the expenses. So there's a question. I just want to ask, is the Catholic Jesuit nature of this and other Jesuit universities eroding? Or is it possible to at least maintain it and advance it? I was pleased to have dinner tonight with Nancy Dalavalli. I was going to mention her in the talk. One of the areas where Fairfield showed that they really had come to fruition, really arrived, is in probably 2000, I guess it was, 30 schools were given $50,000 by Lilly to see what they would do if they were the 15 schools that would get $2 million. And so Nancy Dalavalli and Elizabeth Dreyer were the authors of this Ignatian residential college. We had focus groups for the whole year. And we determined that this is how we would spend $2 million. And it was enormously successful. But I think that the work Nancy's doing now in Mission Identity, Joe DeFeo had done prior to that, and Jerry Blaschik had been doing it, I think Fairfield, that tension is always going to be there between the secular and the religious. I'm very pleased to see what I see at Fairfield in terms of the religious dimension. If you could just follow up. When I was here back in the 60s, there were 23 Jesuits out of, as you say, 50. Now there aren't, and very few. So I wonder what's the students look upon this as a Jesuit Catholic university when they see so few Jesuits around. And also just one more thing, if it requires some kind of effort to increase the Jesuit Catholic nature of the university, I would suggest that students from my era, 60s, 70s, perhaps 80s who experienced having a large number of Jesuits, I think they could be employed to be deputized and help out with the advancement of the Catholic Jesuit nature. Right. Thank you. I mean, when I came, there was 21 Jesuits living in the dorm. There were like 65 Jesuits in the community. Now there are 18. So it has to be much more intentional. And to have creative plans like you just suggest would be one of the ways to look at that. Victor. OK. I think that it's probably, as you move forward, one of the things that I found that was interesting. I graduated in 2001. But what you said about technology is something that I think is very important to really think about how we're going to deal with the future with technology and still keep the same ideals. And I think you have to get the proper faculty to work with the students and teach the same. I think it's the ideals that's important, the Jesuit ideals. I know that it's good that you said that because I take away everybody's electronic devices and their iPads and just that will in the house. And just say, all right, we're going to talk for 20 minutes. How was your day? How was this? It's something that maybe needs to be promoted so that maybe young families can try to do the same thing with their children. That's really the only way you can help that. I was at a committee meeting at another institution two weeks ago. And they were talking all about online learning. And they said you can never do Jesuit education if it's totally online. Because without that personal touch, it might be education, but it's not Jesuit education. Well, I see Brian over here. But I mean, I told Brian this story. But I left the classroom in 2003. And I could do everything I needed to do technologically wise, technology wise. Brian, so I gave some talk here on campus introducing a talk to the people do chemical engineering, actually. But I met Brian going in. I had never met him before. I read about him. I know he does penguins. But the funny thing was he said, well, so he came after I left. And just this one sentence addresses your point. He said, you know, I have a lot of pre-meds in my bio class. So I will record my lectures. And they can download them because they're really nervous. So they download them. And they can pick them up as an MP3 file or a podcast. And I looked at him. I said, like, I have no idea what you just said. And this is four years after I left the classroom. So I know what he's doing. But when he said record, I knew it wasn't real to real. But I had no idea what technology he was talking about. And that's how fast things change. Hi, I have a question. How is Fairfield going to accomplish the goal of developing creative students without having the knowledge and the new technology and fixing unknown problems? I think the technology question is not either or, but both and. I mean, you have to have what the hallmark of Fairfield is just great faculty mentoring and that relationship. And so years later, when people need letters of recommendation, Fairfield faculty members are there. I mean, it's just amazing. And they know their students. And so we have to do both. Technology is important. But technology is not the answer to every question. And I'm a big fan of technology, by the way. Tom, a question that. Here comes the real hard question. No, not really. A question that builds on your experience at Loyola, right? So at Fairfield, and I assume at Loyola, I'm pretty sure, the energy for majoring in the traditional humanities has waned. And yet, we continue to assert, and I think correctly, as you did in your talk, that the work of the humanities in exploring the meaning of what it is to be human remains central to the institution. What experience at Loyola could benefit us here? Great question. I have a guy on my dean's advisory council who teaches physics at Harvard. And the reality is, he said, I came to Loyola to get a liberal arts education. I majored in physics because I always wanted a job. But throughout my entire life, I go to conferences in these world-class, as you can imagine, teaching at Harvard, world-class physicists. And he's saying, you don't have to tell me you went to a tech school. I can figure that out. And so the humanities have helped me write better, speak better, write better grants. And so that, as the educational, that schema, I mean, if you're going to do just natural science, you're going to really marginalize yourself in terms of leading because you're going to have to have all those other skills. And so the more you can encourage students about the outcomes to bring older alums to campus and say, like, this is my story. If I didn't have this skill set, I wouldn't be where I am today. And to leverage that, one of the great things of the Ignatian Residential College was we had alumni mentoring as well. We would bring in a who's who in the community. And they would share with them. I did so well in finance because I had a background in literature as well. And so I think the more you can bring lived examples of outcomes, everything's outcome assessment these days. The more you can bring lived examples of outcomes, then you can convince an 18-year-old who probably knows everything anyway. That's the best part of teaching. Mr. Rockle. Hey, T. I remember my father-in-law at a previous Fairfield U event saying one of the most profound classes he ever took was logic. And he asked if there was ever going to be any sort of return to that as some sort of a course, a requirement, part of, I don't know. And I guess in his memory I'm wondering is that something that is ever discussed in all of those? Sure. And one of my new best friends is a general, Jack Keane, who you see him on Fox News. He's a retired four-star general and he's a commentator. But he's a trustee at Fordham, didn't go to West Point. And the bottom line, getting to know him, he's just an incredible mind. But at one point I sat down next to him and said, when were you going to tell me that you have a master's degree in philosophy? How do you know that? And he goes, well, he says, you know, you're counting when I was an undergraduate. But I always look back and my most challenging classes were philosophy and theology because they taught me the critical thinking skills. And so when I was a commander, a young lieutenant colonel in Kentucky, University of Kentucky, they sent me to do ROTC because I was there for two years. I got a master's degree in philosophy. And then he goes, it has always served me well. And so I don't know if it's just logic per se. But I mean, I think philosophy and theology that gets you into the abstract really enhance the kind of incredible things that your father-in-law Joe did. Joe was the class of 52, I believe, right? And had a very distinguished career in insurance. But the reality is those critical thinking skills, I know because I got grilled by him many times, right? That he had a really honed skill in terms of critical thinking. And that's probably wasn't because he studied accounting and finance, it was because he had these kinds of experience at the core, at Loyola and Fairfield. Janet, my office mate. Thank you. Rob, these are all my old friends here. Thank you, father. Maybe sort of the flip side of Dr. Lakeland's question. Instead of what are those things that you might take and bring back to Fairfield, what are those things that you took from Fairfield or that you know of that are uniquely Fairfield and characteristic and that you might spread to other places, you know, Loyola and the such or any of the other universities that you advised to? They had me do a blog. So it's on Fairfield think sites or something like that first. And you know, what I took away from Fairfield is I see Alan Katz here as one of my great mentors. But I mean, the reality is I took away the lived example of what it means to be a Jesuit educator. For, you know, I came here and, you know, I was 26 years old, you know, there was six of us in that office. I thought I was diving on to heaven of a college professor. But I saw a day in and day out people on my floor. Philosophy was with theology, political science and economics. And their lived example of just hard work, dedication, alumni work, supporting people who had gone, graduated a number of years ago. That left a very big impression on a 20-something young guy. And I learned to be a Jesuit educator by watching the example of the incredible people some of whom are in this room. That's what I took away. And that has just made my life so richer. And I'm so grateful that I've had that opportunity. Tom, you are a living example of an expert on humanity. And I'll never forget your lecture. Well, lecture. You had a seminar in Canisius shortly, I think, before you left here on Kafka. Oh, yeah. And it was so, so enriching. And I'm hoping, are you able to teach philosophy as you're not? I stopped teaching three years ago. But in response to the Black Lives Matters last year, I was so hard to get really qualified people available because everybody wants them. And so I reached out to a Jesuit who just finished his doctorate at Boston College in philosophy. But someone on our faculty in Chicago was a reader on his dissertation. So I said, would your provincial let you come here for a semester? And so I reached out to him. I had a little endowment on the side. And we brought him from Congo. And so the first day of class this semester, his plane got in, he had a little visa problem. So the bottom line wasn't due to Trump, no. But so he had two intro classes in the morning. And I went in to teach them. And I was just so much alive. And I walked in and said, I'm not your teacher, but you're going to have the most amazing semester you've ever had. And I want you to know that he's here because the administration is very responsive to the kinds of questions that were asked during those black-like managed discussions last spring. And so that's, it reminded me of why I like teaching. And like, oh, someone's got it. You were very popular, and you know that. And can I put a plug in for the English department? You were mentioning theology and philosophy where the students learned critical and analytical thinking. Well, you know it starts in the English department. And with great people like Janet Krause, one of my great friends. Mr. Curley. As you know, I have a senior in high school this year. And I've been around to colleges all over the country. And it's amazing to me the building that's going on. So it's like a massive competition. And then you put on your slide what the future's going to look like. And a lot of it's technology-based. So can you give us a glimpse of what you think Fairfield's going to look like in 20 years dealing with that paradigm? I think a lot of articles recently in the Chronicle Higher Education talk about the end of the brick-and-mortar building. It's just going to be a very, very different world. And it's built in a very different way. We just opened a new business school. And there are no departments. I mean, everybody's in little modules. And everything is interdisciplinary. The accounting people are with the marketing people. And they want everybody, the way their offices are set up. If you go into labs these days, they're all very interactional. So I think this big era of new and bigger buildings is going to end in our lifetime. One more. Given those comments. What's the core curriculum for students 20 years from now? A lot of things you talked about are about technology and things like that. What new classes should our students be required to take as part of our core curriculum? I was chairman of the member, Alan. We were on the Blue Ribbon Committee to revise the core. That seemed like a good idea at the time. We put together, there were five of us. We had a year of creative discussions. We came up with three really interesting models of how to change the core at Fairfield. And it was over in 20 minutes of a general faculty meeting. So I don't know if I'm the best person to comment on the Fairfield core. It was one of the most creative interdisciplinary things we did here. We had a great time doing it. But I think certainly, as I said, coding. I mean, kids in high school are learning coding instead of languages. I think that if you're going to be a world citizen, I put a plug in for modern languages. You can't be monolingual in a world like today. And so you have to have some ability to deal with a framework that is not your own. But then, as I said, basic literacy, how that plays out. It might not be that John's suggesting more logic. Make sure that critical thinking comes out. And it doesn't have to be philosophy. It can be English. It can be theology. So maybe outcomes-based core, as opposed to discipline-based core. And I was just a reviewer at another university who wanted to put in a new core program where everything was team taught, which is incredibly expensive. But then everything was interdisciplinary from freshman year. And one of my coolest friends is Lillian Wu, who was on the board with me at Fordham. She is a PhD in math from Cornell. And she is IBM's chief vice president liaison for higher education. She's one of the most interesting people. And she said, every team at IBM is interdisciplinary. And so she was poo-pooing because I was saying, I think having everything interdisciplinary from day one isn't really working. And she said, well, this is what we would do at IBM. That's because it works, because everyone at the interdisciplinary discussion has a PhD in a discipline. And the interdisciplinary comes in the conversation, not the matrix. And so as much interdisciplinary stuff, I think, should be encouraged. But I would hesitate to do it first thing out of the gate. I mean, you have to have a framework before you can have an interdisciplinary framework. That's what I would say. Well, thank you for having me. You almost stepped in a minefield, but you just stepped out. Before we thank Tom, let me just say that there are so many people here this evening who are here, because Tom is here. And we're delighted to have you here for that. Tom is not always here. But we are always here. So please pay attention to the other programs we offer and come along whenever you can. You'll always be very welcome. Please join me in thanking Tom.