Sister Andrea Lee, I.H.M., in her Main Hall office.

Catholic Leader Comes to Campus

Sister Andrea Lee, I.H.M., who joins the college as interim vice president for academic affairs, brings to St. Norbert national recognition as a leader in Catholic liberal arts education; deep knowledge of the critical issues and challenges facing higher education; extensive experience with accreditation, assessment and governance; decades of experience with equity, diversity and inclusion; and a deep love of Catholic higher education.

Lee offered her insights on many of these issues in a keynote address Aug. 18 during the two days of professional development programming for faculty and staff that preface the academic year. For many on campus, it was their first encounter with the dynamic sister, who introduced herself by way of her “nickel rundown”:

“East Coast girl here. Mom is from New York City and dad from New Jersey. I grew up on the ocean, or the Jersey Shore, in Bruce Springsteen land. I’m the oldest of seven – we still call ourselves that – spread over ten years, and the other six are boys … . No, I’m not spoiled! Not when you’re the oldest and the only girl.”

Lee, who has been a Catholic religious since the age of 18, was speaking on the 54th anniversary of her vows as a sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It has, she said been a very happy and fulfilling life that has included stints as president of both St. Catherine University and Alverno College.

“We don’t really retire,” Lee said. As well as her current role at SNC, she also works on mission and sponsorship matters for the Association of Catholic Colleges & Universities and serves on several boards.

The market is crowded and fierce
Lee moved on to an assessment of the challenges facing Catholic education and the ways in which a mission-lived college culture is uniquely prepared to meet them.

“If you are at all awake,” she told her Walter Theatre audience, “you can’t miss the controversy raging everywhere about cost, affordability and loan debt, and most critically, about the very value of what we’re doing [in higher education]. The market is crowded and fierce, and our competitors are smart, well-financed and of single purpose.

“Our cities and our nation are troubled, deeply troubled, racially, economically, politically and socially. And we need to be a player – be in the game, as the president says – helping to move Green Bay, Wisconsin, the nation and world to a new and better place. All of this is pretty daunting.

“Daunting indeed, but we are not starting from scratch. And there is a firm ground under us, an enduring mission and accomplishments of which we can be justifiably proud. Still, we should seek a more sharply articulated academic vision to guide strategy, decisions and action. Because no matter what, the path to St. Norbert’s future must dance straight into, and through, a complex, confusing and contradictory mudpit, bramble bush, wildfire and hurricane of a world.”

Relevance and institutional integrity matter
In her first weeks at St. Norbert, Lee asked herself what indicators suggested that SNC was one of the nation’s premier baccalaureate colleges. What strengthened and weakened the college's confidence in making that claim? How did we define, describe, and defend that prized position within the universe of small, Catholic liberal arts colleges, while simultaneously retaining both relevance and institutional integrity?

“Catholic. Liberal arts. Norbertine. They are our primary distinguishers,” she said, “the shapers of identity if you will: core descriptors, albeit complex, nuanced and fragile ones. In envisioning a premier undergraduate college we must also embrace a future that both provides access, and ensures excellence and embraces the intentional integration of our mission within the curriculum and the co-curriculum. That is easier said than done and is always emphasized, and desirably also emphasized [as] a work in progress. Considering the state of the world, recent experiences, and what it means to be a place clearly defined by the quality of our community, our efforts toward inclusion and belonging should stand at the center of this work.

“Now, concerning what it means to be a Catholic college in the Norbertine tradition, one deeply grounded in the principles that underscore the why of liberal arts: It is hard, challenging, and eminently worthwhile work. That means the curriculum, its content – but it also means the educational philosophy that underscores it, the pedagogy that brings it to life, in very real ways our way of being with and among each other. We mean to give students a life-altering, purposefully matrixed, and profoundly transformative experience. Something elusive and yet daily evident to us in the water or in the DNA as they say, but still demanding vigilance, and rigorous and regular renewal.”

Catholic, liberal arts: diversity and difference
Such a distinct identity presents particular problems when prevailing trends in higher education lean toward large, urban, public, professional and non-residential universities, Lee said. And St. Norbert is rising to the challenge of battling that tide by pairing such unlikely pairings as inclusive and proudly Catholic, traditional and boldly innovative, professionally-oriented and grounded in the liberal arts. “It’s clear that compelling programs and enrollment diversity have been the significant factors in the success of all but the most abundantly endowed among these institutions. Colleges like ours need more diverse students, more faculty and staff diversity, perhaps sought in paradoxical proportion to our passion for preserving our college as we have known and loved it.

“Most centrally, diversity and difference, not as merely tolerated or accepted, but rather embraced as reflecting the diversity that God himself manifest to us in Creation – as was recently and stunningly revealed in photographs of our ever-expanding and evolving universe. With the centrality of the liberal arts as a primary, though not sole, distinguisher, it’s perhaps tempting to take that for granted. To assume that what has always been will be, and will be in the same form and style: Even a cursory look at recent history and current challenges suggests what a mistake it would be to persist in that thinking. We simply have to think more deeply and broadly, and risk more courageously – not abandon or drop, but combine and transform in new ways.

“For a Catholic college like St. Norbert, such expansive thinking is deeply tied to our religious identity, that is to the church’s fundamental teaching around the dignity of every human person around Catholic imagination, around the diversity and interconnectedness of Creation itself as reflected in the particular expression and flavor of that within the charism of our founders. These are powerful motivators for us to keep at it, to move always toward a place of love and inclusion as we firmly turn the lens of students and faculty outward toward the need and potential evident within a vast world of beautiful humans on the planet, – including those who will come here in increasing numbers to learn and work.”

Sustaininability depends on excellence
Lee went on to address the needs that will sustain a premier undergraduate college within the skeptical and crowded higher-education marketplace:

“First we must offer students a relevant and excellent academic experience. It must also be possible for them to complete that education in a reasonable amount of time at an affordable cost. That’s where attracting students, enrolling them, supporting them and helping them finance their educations take center stage, along with thoughtful, robust, contemporary curricula that engage their intellects, their spirits and their souls in pursuing truth, good and the better.”

Excellence, Lee said, required a broad and thoughtfully designed liberal arts curriculum that encouraged, indeed insisted upon, the powerful connections among and across disciplines. Such interconnections, indeed, might forge perhaps the only path toward solving the staggering social, economic, environmental and ethical challenges that face the planet. It was a challenge for which a liberal arts faculty was uniquely prepared, its members working as they did at the junctures of discipline and of seemingly disconnected ideas. In their work to answer the questions posed by one discipline with the tools and wisdom of another lay great promise for the design of elegant solutions.

“An excellent education also requires a welcoming array of academic support services that pursue the leading edge of responsiveness, data-analysis and use. Advising and career integration takes center stage here with a whole cast of essential supporting cast members. An excellent education requires, as well, a solid menu of opportunities for high-achieving students of every economic level, including study abroad, research and community-based learning. This highlights the need for accelerated efforts to diversify further our faculty and staff, to grow curricular and co-curricular programs that enroll our most academically talented and on-time-to-finish students, and a heightened focus on helping students transition from college to career, to stay mentally and physically healthy, and to graduate well-equipped to address the serious problems of our complex and pluralistic world. And excellence, of course, requires facilities and technology matched in quality to the academic programs we offer. We are so fortunate on that front.”

Catholic social teaching and the Catholic intellectual tradition underpin Catholic colleges
For people denied education, economic independence and basic human rights, or those for whom the barriers to such are great, Lee said, Catholic social teaching, with its core principles around the dignity of every human person, offered evidence that hope is warranted and justice attainable.

“To people of privilege, indeed everyone privileged by an education such as this, Catholic social teaching lays down the great challenge of our faith: To make the Gospel message visible in our policies, in our laws, in our institutions, and through our efforts on behalf of poor and marginalized people. This, and the rich Catholic intellectual tradition, get at the very reason for Catholic colleges.

“So let’s deepen our resolve to continue what you already do well,” she urged her audience. “Educate students to lead and to create positive social change wherever they find themselves, and to model and practice that among ourselves. That’s the ‘ why’ of a college like this. Why we persist, keep at it, and why the holistic education we offer is our defining center – our precious jewel at the heart of everything we are and do. And to protect that jewel we must paradoxically adapt to dizzying change and circumstances that demand immediate and compassionate response.”

Sept. 15, 2022