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In the first episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Colleen M. Hanycz, President of Xavier University. Hanycz begins by discussing the opportunities that often go unappreciated or even unseen amidst the challenges presently defining the climate in higher education. While financial models remain a concern over which leaders must be vigilant, Hanycz contends that Jesuit colleges and universities such as Xavier as well as many other Church-related universities have an advantage when cultivating brave spaces for conversation and debate. Challenging matters should not be pushed aside but, when met with disciplined and charitable communication, opportunities for growth can take hold and flourish in such environments. Hanycz then discusses her background as a legal scholar and the discernment process that led her to serve as the president of an Ursuline institution in Brescia University College, a Christian Brothers institution in La Salle University, and now a Jesuit institution in Xavier. That background and her service as the first lay president at two of those three institutions afforded Hanycz with wisdom she shares with other individuals who may also consider appointments as the first lay presidents. Hanycz then closes by discussing her understanding of the academic vocation and the ways Xavier introduces its educators to the charisms defining the Jesuit expression of the academic vocation.
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Colleen Hanycz, President of Xavier University. Thank you for joining us.
Colleen Hanycz: Delighted to be here. Thank you for having me.
Todd Ream: In March 2025, the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States highlighted women leaders who serve the church and the world through their leadership in Jesuit and Ignatian Ministries. As the president of one of those ministries in Xavier University, you acknowledged higher education faces, strong headwinds, including shifting demographics, growing scrutiny of the values of colleges and universities provide. For educators serving Jesuit institutions such as Xavier, though you also contend that the headwinds provide opportunities.
In what ways do those headwinds provide opportunities in a context such as Xavier and the institution you lead?
Colleen Hanycz: It’s just a, a great question, and I think my answer probably is reflective, not just of Xavier’s reality but more broadly Jesuit schools, faith-based schools in particular. I think you’ll hear that in a second. But as you noted, the headwinds are broad and, and deep. So everything from the fact that the college going population is shrinking.
We know that this is this, this cliff that everybody speaks about that is almost upon us. After the 2008 recession, the birth rate dropped pretty dramatically. And so now those kids that were born at that time should be preparing for college and aren’t there. So we’re all sort of adjusting to all of that, that demographic cliff.
But for me, the really big issue and the ones that you identify is this scrutiny around the value, the value of a college degree. And it’s grown from all sorts of places.
First of all, a college degree, even at public institutions has become very expensive. And I think about the portion of income and, and assets that went to pay for college when I went 30 some years ago compared to what families are called to do or individual students are called to do now, has just dramatically changed college. The cost of college has outstripped inflation for over three decades, and as a result of that, now families are looking at college and, and really scrutinizing the you know, the return on investment.
So I think one of the challenges to that has been this national narrative. And again, it’s a perception, but perception becomes reality without even really measuring the truth of it. But this national narrative that what we are doing on our campuses intellectually is narrow, conformist and does not allow students to really learn how to think, but rather we’re telling them what to think.
And so I think for many across the country that has become, to the extent that you believe that, that is truly what’s happening in our colleges, that has become a reason to say, I don’t think this is a good place for my child or a good place for me. And therefore, in the case of the student, so therefore, I’m gonna look at alternatives.
So one of the great things about Xavier, in particular, but I think that this can be extrapolated more broadly to Jesuit schools and to other faith-based institutions, is that we are absolutely grounded at Xavier in what I am calling this model of intellectual capitalism. So it goes hand-in-hand with institutional neutrality. You are not going to hear me speaking on behalf of the university saying that thing that happened in the news was terrible. It was unjust. It should never have happened. Or this is what the government needs to be doing next. That is not speech that you will see coming outta Xavier under my leadership.
So the thinking about that is, well, why? Universities are supposed to be thought leaders and so on. We are thought leaders. It’s just happening in our classrooms. It’s happening on our campus. It is not something that you will see me as a president promulgating and speaking out to the world.
So what that means and why Xavier is uniquely positioned to deal with that value proposition for college is that I am focused on creating spaces on this campus where students can encounter a very diverse set of views on, on whatever the topic might be: difficult views, views that make them upset, views that may make them angry.
But what comes out of that is this absolute honing of their ability to think critically, to discern, you know, these are to reflect on their peers and on the views that are being brought to them. These are all key values of our mission, of our Jesuit mission and key commitments that we make at Xavier University.
So when you, when a student comes into an environment where they hear two very diametrically opposed views on the same current issue, it forces them to say, well, I didn’t like that. Well, why didn’t you like it? I felt uncomfortable and I don’t want to have that conversation. Oh, no, no, no. You felt uncomfortable, which is exactly where I need you to be. We’re gonna get you back into that conversation.
So it is one of the things that we are doing very actively, in a very focused way at Xavier, so that our faculty and our students, the educators and the learners are coming together around a very broad set of viewpoints on, on the leading issues of the day. And I think what that is doing in a small way is allowing us to defeat that idea that we have become very narrow conformist intellectual sort of deserts in our, in our campuses, because that’s not what’s happening at Xavier.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. Perhaps the answer to this question is embedded in some ways in what you were just talking about, but you contend also that to view those headwinds as opportunities, Jesuit educators need to be bold. How do you define boldness in such a context then?
Colleen Hanycz: Well, you’re right, it is sort of a little bit contained in the answer that I already share with you, but as I think about boldness, I have a completely different view to maybe what would be a more normal perspective. So you think about boldness as stepping out and having a big opinion and, and sharing that opinion and then hopefully influencing people.
I see the opposite, not sharing an opinion, creating the environment where those opinions can be developed properly on a campus with, within the learners and the educators as boldness. It’s brave. It’s not safe spaces. It’s brave spaces. It’s this idea that we are being very bold. In what might appear as passive, because we’re quiet about it, is in fact the opposite. And we are forcing our students to encounter difficult ideas and, out of that, it will shape their ability to find the truth.
And after all, certainly on a Catholic campus, if you are not focused entirely on the truth, then, then I’m not sure what you’re doing, so we find that to be a pretty bold encounter. At least I do most days.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. Would you please offer an example or two of initiatives that are being exercised in particular at Xavier, that highlight this boldness?
Colleen Hanycz: So we have a wonderful program here that predates me. My predecessor Father Michael Graham started this, and it’s called Take It On. And the notion of Take It On is that Xavier would encounter those pressing ideas of the day and bring our students into the orbit of those ideas so that they could figure out how to, to navigate them.
So some of the activities of Take It On is for example, I think of when the Dobbs decision came out, overturning Roe v. Wade, which as you would imagine on a college campus that is Catholic, it was obviously something that hit very close to our mission and identity.
So we created panels, through Take It On, where we had one panel in particular, and this was sort of helping our students to think about, about Dobbs, to think about Roe v. Wade, to think about how they saw the rights of a woman versus the rights of a child, versus how we think about life as ranging from conception to natural death in the teachings of the Catholic Church and how we interrogate that.
So one particular panel, we had a law professor who positioned herself as pro-choice. We had another lawyer who positioned herself as pro-life. They talked about the decision. They talked about both sides of the decision. We had a very open and robust period of interaction with our students.
I’m not a big fan of one-sided speakers, like speakers that just come in and say, I feel strongly in pro-choice or I feel strongly in pro-life. I don’t think it gives our students the range to really learn if, unless they see different sides of a situation. So that was one key example that our students loved and they were able to really dig into the issue and see it from two very different perspectives so that hopefully they would begin to form their own views on it.
So Take It On, has been a program at Xavier now for five years, and it has just been an exceptional program that every year hosts panels and debates and information sessions that help our students grapple with really pressing issues of the day.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. You also contend that those Jesuit charisms lead to a much needed focus on the common good.
In what ways do Jesuit charisms that animate a campus such as Xavier lead to an appreciation of the common good?
Colleen Hanycz: Well, I think the common good is amorphous. It has a lot of different elements to it, but for us you know, especially at a time now when we are grappling as a nation with how to approach certain communities that maybe have not been at the table and how to make sure that there is room. And, you know, we currently have an administration that wants to move away from some of our more recent practices, whether that’s around DEI, what that might be and what is appropriate to make sure that there is an opportunity for all Americans to participate in the beauty and the opportunities of this country.
So one of the things at Xavier and at a, at a Catholic institution, certainly at a Jesuit institution, is that our commitment to bringing students in who may not have always had access to education is grounded in the common good and is grounded in Gospel values around the inherent dignity of the human person because that human person is formed in the image of God.
So, because that’s our starting point, this for us, these commitments are not sort of just popular, trendy things that we do at a certain time in history. These are the commitments that define us, and because we are committed to the inherent dignity of the individual, we are therefore driven to advance the common good by making sure that everyone has a place at the table. So that’s just sort of one example of how the common good gets actualized, and made very real on our campus.
But there are many others. It’s really forming our students so that they will go out into the world as leaders and be committed to looking around and making sure that the decisions they are making and how they lead their lives advance the common good. And it’s not just an individualistic approach in their decisions.
Todd Ream: I appreciate that. Thank you. I wanna transition now to ask you some questions about your own formation as a scholar and educator.
You earned an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Toronto’s St. Michael’s College, and a Juris doctorate from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. You practiced securities and employment law in Toronto before pursuing a master’s and a PhD in law at York University’s Osgood Hall.
At what point in time did you determine you had focused your energies on the practice of law, and then at what point in time did you make that transition to focusing your energies on the study and teaching of the law in addition to its practice?
Colleen Hanycz: That’s a really great question because what I can tell you is I always thought I would be a lawyer. It was just something that I was really interested in. I had a tremendous mentor in my uncle, and he was a civil litigator that I was extremely, I was extremely close to him and to my aunt and, and my cousins, their kids, their sons throughout my life. And so he and I talked about the law from a young age and he was certainly the one that, when I think about my formation, made me think about the exciting possibilities of the practice of law.
And like my parents, you know, he was someone in my life that said, well, you could do this, you could absolutely do this. And I think every young person needs that person in their life. And as I said, I had the benefit of my Mom and Dad and then my uncle saying, well, why wouldn’t you think about this? Of course you could do it. You have all the skills and so on. So then you start to believe it yourself.
So I can tell you, I remember with absolute clarity when I, when I graduated in May of 1994 from law school and, you know, we had the big ceremony at the law school and now I’m leaving campus with my Mom and Dad, and I remember saying to them, well, that will be my last day on a university campus. I was so ready to be gone. There was no way I was going back.
I couldn’t wait to practice. I was at a big firm in downtown Toronto that had several hundred lawyers and I loved where I was heading, and I was doing securities law, which was exciting and fast paced. I was a litigator, so I loved the courtroom and, and so on.
And then as I got into my practice, I remember, much to my surprise and disappointment in myself, thinking I am missing that sort of intellectual side of the law. And I thought, this is crazy why, I mean, I was so ready to be done with that. So I graduated May of ’94. By May of, by spring of ’97, ’96, I had decided to do my master’s.
So I started doing what’s the LLM is a degree, my master’s in law and was studying the area that I was most interested in, which was dispute resolution. I was looking at alternatives to courtroom battles to litigation. So of course you get into mediation or arbitration, some of these other processes that really fascinated me because I started thinking about the fact that if we have to take every case to court, it’s not really an efficient use of time. That, you know, not every case needs to go to court. And it’s very expensive for the parties. You just need to actually sit down and figure out what the common ground is between these parties, and maybe we can do this in a more civil way.
So I completed my LLM in alternative dispute resolution, and then went on to do a PhD very focused on mediation and alternative dispute resolution. But I certainly remember that moment where I thought, I’m gonna go back and do my master’s, and my whole family looked at me like, what? I thought you were never gonna do that again.
But even then when I started studying my graduate work in law, I didn’t, I wasn’t thinking academics. I was thinking, oh, this will supplement my practice. It will feed this part of me that really wants to do, you know, to be back in the intellectual pursuit of law, looking at theories, reading cases, and so on. Well, I continue my practice, but in fact, ended up being a little more important in my life than I thought it would be when I started that work.
Todd Ream: You mentioned your uncle as having an important role. Any other teachers along the way that helped, whether it was through your undergraduate or law school, but then when you went back to school also?
Colleen Hanycz: There were countless teachers along the way. Certainly, I remember when I was when I thought about going into to study graduate school, it was a hundred percent my Mom. And at that point I had little kids and babies. And I was in all that mess of early family life and a fairly new marriage and so on.
And I remember her saying, well, why wouldn’t you go back to school? You know, I’ll help you with this. My husband was working, I was working and, and she said, I’ll help with the kids, and what can I do? And, you know, I think you’re missing this in your life. So again, sometimes it’s someone just saying, I believe in you.
And, and, and I had encountered so many incredible professors when I did my JD and and saw the impact that they had on my life and how I looked at the world differently because of them. And I thought if there was ever a chance for me to be that for somebody else that would feel very much like a vocation.
And so in my mind, it really started to emerge as a vocation. And I think the people that I was around who were helping me to, to shape me and mentor me, saw that as vocational. And it has been vocational for me from the beginning.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. Are there any authors in particular who had a larger impact on your thinking and how you understand yourself as an educator, but also as a scholar?
Colleen Hanycz: For me, sometimes it’s the authors that aren’t really intending to be authors. So I think of one of the cases that I love reading Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a dissent in the Abrams v. US decision. And this is where we, where he introduced this notion of a marketplace of ideas. And it has become a touchstone for me. The idea that, like, was he an author? He was writing a dissenting decision in a trial case or an appeal case in that case. But I’ve read that so many times and his belief that the best truth, the best knowledge, the best advancement of human society comes when we look at ideas that are diametrically in tension and opposed to one another.
And we have this marketplace of ideas, what I have called intellectual capitalism. This idea that there are, that, that certain ideas get stronger because they’re good and they’re well-formed and other ideas fall off because they’re fragile and they don’t make sense and they are easily defeated. So he’s one of the ones that, and there’s just countless others like him.
But I actually in my life have taken great formation from some of our terrific jurists, the judges, the justices over the years that have written about the role of society and the role of the law in society, and how the law is really a reflection of what matters to us. And I have learned and taken a great deal of, I guess education from them, not traditional authors so much I’ve read many of them as well, but those are the ones I would point to most directly.
Todd Ream: Conflict resolution came to captivate your interest and then what facets of conflict resolution perhaps have formed you in terms of how you now understand yourself as an educational leader?
Colleen Hanycz: The idea of conflict resolution is that we do better when we sit down and look for common ground. And I will tell you, I do that every single day in my job, every day, not only as an educator, but now as I’ve been a university president for almost 17 years. This is my third institution.
And I remember when I left my role as a law professor to take on my first presidency, and that was in Canada, and feeling a real melancholy thinking, oh, I’m leaving the law behind after all of this. I’ve used it every single day since then. So I didn’t leave anything behind in the law that it became a very important part of my work.
But I think conflict resolution, that idea that instead of it being my right versus your right, and we fight it out and see who’s right is greater than the other, it’s rather looking at common ground. Like what is it that’s important to both of us?
You know, you, you look at I think the classic way to illustrate this is in family law and you look at a divorce case where you have a husband and a wife. And you know, I’m entitled to this property or these assets and the other saying, no, they’re mine because I did this and so on. When you get that same couple into mediation, you often have far greater outcomes, because you are able to say, okay, I hear the rights that you’re expressing, but I’ve been a trained mediator now for 30 years, and, and what I can say to that couple is, but isn’t it true that you share these certain commitments, like both of you wanna create an environment where your children will be well cared for and loved and so on.
Well, then you have both parties saying, yep, that’s true. I want that. And yes, I want that too. And all of a sudden you’re building something that they can both be part of. And so conflict resolution, it just has the opportunity to be much more holistic and, and to have much more satisfying outcomes at the end of the day than say a litigation process.
A litigation process, I think people who are not litigating for, you know, in their daily work every day for whom the whole court structure is new, they think they will, even if they’re fully successful, that somehow they’ll be vindicated at the end of those processes and that a court will say, yes, you were right, and you never should have had to drink that polluted water that made you and your family sick and so on. It ends up being a very unsatisfying outcome. You know, there aren’t apologies involved. There aren’t any of mediation and alternative dispute resolution structures often give an outcome that has a little more satisfaction around human needs.
Todd Ream: You echoed that this is your third presidency now. I’d like to go back to the discernment process that led you to embrace the appointment of your first presidency, which was as the lay principle of Brescia University College. You were appointed in 2008. Would you share a few details concerning the discernment process that led you to accepting that appointment after you taught law at York University for so many years?
Colleen Hanycz: Sure. So it’s sort of a funny story between my husband and I, which will now be a funny story for the whole world to see after this, but so there I was working at Osgood and loving my work, I was now, you know, had earned tenure, tenured law professor, and this was just, I mean, I saw my whole future. It was fantastic. We lived in Toronto, which I was born in Toronto. He was born in Toronto. Our three kids were born in Toronto. Our families were there. It was all perfect.
And I was approached by a recruiter, headhunter that was working for the university, and I had had encounters with her in the past on a board that I served in. We used her to find the headmaster for a small school. But anyway, make a long story short, her name was Laverne and she came to me and she said, you know, Brescia University College in London, which is about two and a half hours drive from Toronto, they’re looking for a new president.
They called it a principal, but it’s the presidential rule. I said, yes. You’re looking for suggestions from me? And she said, well, I’d really like you to come and meet with the search committee. I said, Laverne, there is no chance. I’m not prepared for that. I’m a professor. I’ve never been a dean. I’ve never been a provost. There’s absolutely no way I would have the preparation for that.
She said, oh, I get all of that. This is why she’s very good at her job. But she said, just come and have, you know what? You and your husband come for a weekend to London, Ontario. You know, leave the kids with your mom. We had, I think at that point we did, we had three kids under seven kind of thing. You know what those days are like, right? Come for the weekend, get away. Just sit with the search committee. Tell them you know a little bit about what you think about higher ed. I said, well, what harm in that? So that’s what we did.
I still remember we pulled up onto the campus. I was to meet with them, let’s say at noon, and my husband said, I’m just gonna wait in the car. It’s like 45 minutes and then when you get back, we’ll drive home and we’ve had this lovely weekend. Perfect. So he tells it. I get back in the car an hour later. I said, well, this is very serious. There is like, we need to actually rethink our entire lives right now because that conversation that I just had with those people, there is such an opportunity here for me to have an impact on, and it, it’s the only women’s college in Canada, such an opportunity for me to have an impact on these young women. And it was a Catholic school, which was very central to who I am and to our vocation.
I said, we need to be thinking about this. So Peter tells the story that we’re driving home. He’s not saying much because he’s thinking, how are we gonna find a house? How are we gonna sell our house? What about school? What, and I’m thinking about, oh my goodness, the opportunities and how I could, so that discernment, went on for a fairly long period of time as I moved through that process.
But by the time we got to the point where they offered me a position, I was absolutely convinced through a lot of prayer, a lot of conversation that I could make a difference in that role. And, and boy, I’ve never regretted those moves. I loved my job teaching law, but I really felt, I have since felt a calling to administration in higher ed.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Brescia was founded by the Ursuline sisters.
Colleen Hanycz: Mm-hmm.
Todd Ream: And their charisms animated that institution. In what ways did you learn to appreciate what that had to offer and then communicate those charisms as the president there?
Colleen Hanycz: Sure. So the Ursuline Sisters are remarkable women. If you look to their history, going back to Brescia, Italy, Brescia was named after the, the, the city where they where Saint Angela Merici and her initial companions came together and how they managed to navigate over time, bishops who weren’t particularly thrilled with having them in, in their diocese and so on, and, and a bishop could decide overnight to eject any sort of a a religious a congregation, and they just sort of kept their head down and did really important work, often serving the underserved. That will be no surprise to you.
I think Catholic universities in particular, but many faith-based universities more broadly, position themselves, right in that intersection of, of those who need the most and, and and the Ursulines were no exception to that. So I saw the charism animated in very real ways.
My first board of trustees had a formal requirement of consensus to approve any sort of resolutions that came forward. And as a lawyer and a law professor, when I first encountered that, I thought, well, this is never gonna work. I mean, we’re gonna vote on things that are contentious, like budgets and new programs and closing programs and how we’re gonna, I mean, we’re never going to get consensus around some of these really important decisions that we’re going to make.
So I will say, that’s one area where I went in with a certain amount of skepticism and I’m thinking, you know, this isn’t, well, I learned so much, Todd, I can’t even tell you, about you know, how we keep centered on the needs of the student, the interests of the student, and everything else is secondary. All of our decisions are made through that lens, and that is something that I first encountered so firmly in the Ursuline charism and have seen it since.
I’ve had the real blessing of leading institutions grounded in three different charisms. The Christian Brothers at La Salle University in Philadelphia, and now of course the Jesuits at Xavier, and I’m probably one of the few presidents in the country right now who has had that chance to be grounded in three different founding congregations and two of them, the first lay president.
So it’s seeing how those commitments come to life in the classroom, in the decisions that we make and how our board structures its fiduciary obligations and so on. It’s been remarkable. But that started very firmly in seeing the way decisions were made in an Ursuline institution.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. I want to ask about that second or that middle institution that you served at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Because we’ve talked about the Ursuline charisms, we’ve talked about the Jesuit charisms as they animate life at Xavier, and now the Christian Brothers there at La Salle, where you were the first lay president coming in 2015. The discernment process that led you to leave London, Ontario, and then come to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Colleen Hanycz: That was a big one. That was a really significant one because of course we had still a relatively young family. Our youngest, Claire, was in sixth grade. Our oldest was heading into college as well. So moving them across an international boarder was something that required a whole other level of discernment as we thought about what was best for the family and where our vocational calling was bringing us.
So when I was approached, I was in, I guess, I’m trying to remember, I guess it was my seventh year at Brecia and I was, and I was at the point where you think, okay, maybe what’s next? You know, I feel like the university would benefit now from a fresh set of views in the same way that I’ve shared my fresh views over the last several years. Where, what might be next? But I wasn’t actively looking.
I heard, again from a recruiter in Philadelphia who said, is this something you would consider? You know, you’ve got this track record, you’ve had success at your first placement and so on. So I remember coming to the city, but not really sure what to expect. I interviewed downtown and one of their very old clubs in Philadelphia, right next to the city hall is called the Union League.
And I remember calling my husband the morning of the interview, so I’d stayed in the Union League the night before. Now I’m getting up, it’s probably eight in the morning for an interview across the street in I think it was their law firm. They had a big boardroom and that’s where I was interviewed. I’m an early riser and I like to prepare, so I’m ready to go.
And he said, how are you doing? And I said, well, I’m standing in the Union League. And it’s a bit surreal because this building is older than our country, older than Canada. And it’s just, I remember saying to him like, do you really think, like, are we ready to think about going to the U.S.? My brother had moved to the US for his job long, many years before and, and had really enjoyed it. So that was a big part of the discernment.
And then it was, what is this new institution going to be like? Do I have transferable experience or is it going to be so different? It was very transferrable. The Christian Brothers were again, as the first lay president, incredibly welcoming to me and, and invited me into their charism. And again, it’s that notion of a student-centeredness and supporting our students in ways that I hadn’t necessarily seen prior to that, that made me think very seriously that there would be an opportunity for me to make a difference.
So it was a longer discernment process, I think, because of our kids, and they would be switching educational models completely, which they navigated very, very well. But again, just a great opportunity for the whole family.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Bringing you then to your current appointment as President in Xavier that occurred in 2021, shortly after COVID, or sort of as, we were getting hopefully toward the end of COVID there. Yeah.
Colleen Hanycz: Are we done with COVID?
Todd Ream: Well, yeah, it seems to linger socially and epidemiologically in certain ways out there.
Colleen Hanycz: Absolutely.
Todd Ream: Few details concerning the discernment process that led to the transition from La Salle then to Xavier, which I assume was made a little bit easier by the fact that one of them plays in the A-10 and one of them plays in the Big East, so.
Colleen Hanycz: That would have been a problem. I’m telling you right now, that would’ve been a big problem. So yes, that was again, six years into my time at LaSalle and you know, in these jobs you start getting approached by recruiters before you even unpack your boxes, especially if you’ve got a fair amount of experience, which universities have become so complex that they really are looking for leaders that, that have weathered some of the storms. I think from a business angle, the complexity is just staggering even the changes that I’ve seen in 17 years.
But in any event, would I consider this search Xavier? I had met Father Graham before at the ACCU, so the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. You’ve had Donna Carroll on this show before and she’s currently leading the ACCU. And so I was involved in those annual meetings and various programs that they run that I was helping with.
So I’d met Father Graham over time and I remember saying to my husband some years ago, if Xavier ever becomes available when, you know, if he retires, that’s something I would be interested in. And once again, I was not doing broad searching. I only was looking at Xavier that year. I wasn’t looking at any other schools.
Of course, our daughter, Claire, was looking at Xavier at the same time. She was a senior in Philadelphia. She says it’s the worst case of helicopter parenting known to mankind. She said, mom, nobody else’s parents follow them to college and become the president where they’re trying to break in as a first-year student. So sure enough, that is what happened. And Claire will graduate in May here from Xavier, as I complete my fourth year as well, so.
Todd Ream: Yeah, her mom comes in with a press conference attached to it.
Colleen Hanycz: Right. That’s right. She was just like, I can’t believe this. Like none of my friends have their mothers following them to college. Anyway, again, a real discernment where I wanted to understand the difference in charism. I wanted to understand— I think as I have matured, that’s a nice way to put it as I have matured over these leadership opportunities, I’ve become more and more focused on the potential for impact.
How can I advance the common good? How can I prepare these young people for lives of service lives, of impact, lives of success? Am I gonna be able to do that? Because if I’m not gonna be able to do that, I’m not interested. There is a lot of easier work as you know, Todd, than working on a college campus. And yet I don’t believe there is any work that can have greater impact on the world. So I looked at Xavier very, very critically through that lens saying, are they positioned in a way that I can come and take all of this bundled experience that I have had over whatever that was 13 years of college leadership and actually put it to good use.
So, you know, we have moved very quickly. We’re opening the first medical school that Ohio has seen, a new medical school in over 50 years. So I was very blessed when I got here by a board that was embracing of my leadership, my ideas and, and my vision as it started to emerge. And as I listened, I did a listening tour when I first arrived at Xavier to hear what are our spires of excellence? Where are the opportunities that we just haven’t been able to take advantage of yet?
One of them that came out of all of that was this notion of creating a college of osteopathic medicine, the first Jesuit college of osteopathic medicine in history in the world. And so, you know, that intersection between a very holistic approach to medicine and this incredible “Cura Personalis,” this focus on the entire person, mind, body, and spirit just came together naturally.
So it was really, at the discernment stage, before I took this job, it was looking at, is there going to be an opportunity to really have impact? And I became convinced that there was, so delighted to be here.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. Just as a quick summary here, you served at three different institutions as presidents, three different orders, thus three different sets of charisms. You were the, and correct me if I’m wrong here, you were the second lay president at Brescia?
Colleen Hanycz: Correct, yes.
Todd Ream: And the first lay president at both La Salle and Xavier.
Thinking about that reservoir of experience that you’ve collected over that time and over those years, what would you offer in terms of advice to someone who’s thinking about a comparable path and especially a comparable path that may lead that person to be the first lay president in an institution that has known clerical leadership for its history?
Colleen Hanycz: I will tell you, and I think my, my boards would tell you this at the three institutions, as would the founding congregations, it’s a little rough at the beginning. I’ve gotten much better at knowing what the conditions are for success, going in to be a lay president.
Now, the Jesuits, they have been remarkable because I’m not the first lay president in the Jesuit network. In the AJCU, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, 27 other institutions have learned how to properly invite a lay leader into their communities. So it has been nothing short of seamless here at Xavier.
And so that meant, oh, effective communication with the community, the Jesuit priests who are living on campus or in my case are in Cincinnati or more broadly the Midwest Province housed in Chicago that we belong to with six Jesuit universities and then finally the national association. Just making sure that I am more and I would, would give this advice to any colleague coming along to think about this work more explicit, because in the past, they had a priest sitting in this chair, so at dinnertime he would tell the guys in the house what was going on and, and so on. There were those natural gatherings for, for informal communication.
Well, as soon as I got here, I’m not typically sitting at the dinner table over in the house. So you have to be a little more explicit about building those communication pathways that run both ways, input, sharing information, et cetera.
I think now we are seeing, you know, the impact of the laity across our faith-based institutions, not just Catholic institutions, other Christian institutions and, and institutions of faith. And it is very much a skillset as to how you bring a lay leader in, because it can be pretty precarious. I’m not formed in the same way that the Jesuit priests were in, in the, in the charism and in the mission identity of, of Ignatian mission identity. I don’t have the same formation, so I’m gonna feel a little clunky to, to our, you know, to the community compared to the Jesuit priests that have come before me for almost 200 years at Xavier.
So we need to, to give each other a bit of grace, and we also need to very much be focused on formation. So, for example, I’m participating as we speak in something called the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, which is a fundamental bedrock to the Jesuit mission and identity. And it really is the original exercises that St. Ignatius wanted all Jesuits to go through and our Jesuits go through. Well, now I’m going through this right now and it’s a multi-month process, but it really is more formation work that will help me to be more grounded in our mission identity.
So for me anyway, that is the single greatest area that I think a lay leader contemplating leading a religious institution that you know, where you’re the first lay leader outside of the founding congregation, it’s to be very, very particular about mission formation. And if you don’t have it, make sure you have a way to get it so that you will be able to be authentic in, in continuing to advance the mission.
The last thing I wanna do is take us away from our mission. I want to be absolutely centered on that and, and so all of that helps. And you have to love basketball. I just need to say that. That absolutely needs to be part of it. If you’re thinking about coming to Xavier.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you very much.
Colleen Hanycz: Of course.
Todd Ream: As our time unfortunately begins to become short, I want to ask you about the academic vocation and as a scholar of the law and as a university president, what qualities and/or characteristics define how you understand the academic vocation, and then how you as the leader at Xavier seek to inform and offer practices that help younger educators come into the institution who serve your students?
Colleen Hanycz: So specific to Xavier and the Jesuit mission identity, a commitment to academic excellence is bedrock for us. That’s just something that is, it is, it is a rigor and a set of standards in the classroom. It is an absolute focus on pedagogy and how our educators teach. It is what you’ll often hear me talking about is this notion of Ignatian educators and everybody on our campus is an educator.
I will say to to my staff colleagues, you don’t know the conversation that you’re having with a student, you might be in the financial aid office, you might be lined up for a coffee and you’re chitchatting with a student and you’re, you work for a physical plant, or you might be someone that is in student affairs, you are having, you are in the role of an educator. And so at all times you are imparting mission to our students and education to our students. It is a vocation.
As I said earlier, and I know you probably would agree, there are easier places to earn a living than on a college campus. It’s just a lot of complexity and constant sets of challenges. But there is no better place to have impact than a college campus. So we have to think about that as vocational.
My husband and I pray significantly when we are looking at each of these opportunities, or especially when I am down in the dumps and saying, you know, this is not working. This piece of whatever it is, a program, or we can’t seem to get on top of this challenge, and we pray about it because what, what I will say to him, and this is part of the academic vocation and it gives me a great deal of relief, this is not my work. This is God’s work. I’m an instrument in this work. I bring my best efforts to it every day. I try and learn from my experience so that I won’t replicate errors and failures and, and I’ll try and be more successful every day than I was the day before.
But this is not my work, so God wants this work done a certain way and I want to partner with Him in delivering on that and partner with all of my colleagues on campus. To me anyway, that removes some of that sort of individualized pressure and makes this vocational. God, I am willing to do this work with you. And, you know, show me what you want me to do.
So that to me is a large part of the academic vocation, but I don’t, can’t think of a time and, and maybe it’s just because I’m in this time when our world was more complex, more fraught, more in need of leaders who are holistic in their orientation, who have a grounding in the liberal arts and all that the liberal arts has to offer, theology, philosophy, history, English, the modern languages, I mean mathematics. The list goes on. Pure science. These young people are going to face and be involved in careers that we can’t even imagine yet. Very different than 30 years ago.
So that is a vocation. We are preparing them to be the leaders of tomorrow. And whether it’s sitting in my office where I don’t have as much interaction with the actual student as I did 20 years ago as a law professor, or whether it’s in the classroom, or whether it’s in the cafeteria line, we are all pouring into these young men and women so that they will be the leaders when we aren’t here.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. The virtues that are necessary then to exercise such a sense of vocation as, as you described and has exercised at Xavier. Now, what would some of those be that perhaps we should be holding up for our other colleagues?
Colleen Hanycz: Well, it goes without saying that the ability to think strategically and creatively is part of it. There is the rule book is being rewritten every single day on our campuses. For me, it is, you know, it’s not, a sense of humor is not a virtue, but it certainly helps to survive some of the ups and downs of day to day. So being not taking yourself too seriously is something that I feel pretty strongly about.
Todd Ream: College presidents need a sense of humor you’re saying then?
Colleen Hanycz: They do. Yeah, they absolutely do. When I hire my cabinet members, I’ll often include, even in the job posting, sense of humor is a requirement. And, you know, sometimes we have an inclination in higher education leadership to, you know, be very serious about these very pressing challenges. And yes they are, but let’s also have some fun while we’re together.
I think in addition to a strategic mindset, the notion of resilience and resilience is tough because it’s hard to teach resilience. You just have to, life teaches you resilience. You bounce back from all sorts of things that show up on your doorstep, but that is something that you need in higher education. You need a fortitude that is not necessarily required in all of the other professions that abound.
But for me, it’s not so much a virtue, but it is a reliance on my faith that I couldn’t do this work without it. I have certainly encountered lots of tough moments in our life. We lost a child seven years ago. One of our middle child was 18. And, and just that notion of if you aren’t seeing God in your life every day, I don’t know how you, you come back from moments like that. And I feel the same way on a much smaller scale in the work that I’m doing every day. If I don’t see God’s hand in it, to me that is something that I couldn’t do this work without that.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you, thank you very much. As we close, in what ways can a university such as Xavier become of more service to the Church moving forward? And in what ways can the Church be of more service to say Xavier University and Church-related colleges and universities as a whole?
Colleen Hanycz: Right, well, I think our greatest service to the Church is to build the Church through our students. It’s to expose those students to a view of the Church that is, A, grounded in history and that respects that legacy and that grounding, but is also very creative thinking about the future of the Church. So that’s our service.
Our service is to have young men and young women come out of here with a deep commitment to their faith or whatever if, if they’re not, I mean, Xavier has many students who are not Catholic. So what I say to those students is, you don’t have to be Catholic, but you need God in your life. So figure out what that looks like for you based on your faith tradition or if you have no faith tradition, think about a faith.
But that, when I think about the Catholic Church in particular, my service, Xavier’s service to the Catholic Church is to create young men and women who will continue to build up that Church with an absolute commitment to the legacy, to the mission, to the vision, to the faith commitments of the Catholic Church, but at the same time who are willing to see that Church in a modern iteration, and how to make sure that the Church continues to reflect the people that it serves. So that is our, that is our absolute treasure and what it is, how we service the building of the greater Church.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you, thank you very much.
Our guest has been Colleen Hanycz, President of Xavier University. Thank you for sharing your insights and wisdom with us.
Colleen Hanycz: Thank you for doing this. I love your series. It is a tremendous program and it is such an honor to have been invited to participate, so thank you for that.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
