New President

SOUTH BEND (Ind.) TRIBUNE, Dec. 27 — Former Notre Dame president Father Theodore Hesburgh's sister will become the new president of St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Ind.

Carol Mooney will assume her post as the school's 11th president June 1, the college announced Dec. 26. She will succeed current president Marilou Eldred, who plans to retire at the end of the school year.

Mooney has been on the faculty of the Notre Dame Law School since 1980. She graduated from the law school in 1977 after earning a bachelor's degree from St. Mary's in 1972. Since 1996 she has served as a university vice president and associate provost.

Optimistic

CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Dec. 28 — There's one word to describe the new attitude at Loyola University Chicago: optimistic.

During the 1990s, the student body had dwindled, the administration decided to dip into its endowment for building improvements and the school had to endure several public-relations blunders.

Now, applications at the school have tripled and classes are teeming with students. Father Michael Garanzini, the university's president since 2001, has worked to close a $34 million budget gap and whittle away at a $224 million debt.

A new recruiting effort in the Chicago area has yielded 1,900 freshman, compared with a senior class of 880 students.

Founder Dies

POUGHKEEPSIE (N.Y.) JOURNAL, Dec. 30 — Marist Brother Paul Ambrose Fontaine, the founding president of Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., died Dec. 27 in Florida. He was 90.

Brother Fontaine served as president from 1946 to 1958 when the school was known as Marian College. It became Marist College in 1960.

At one point in his life Brother Fontaine served as assistant general of the Marist order in Rome and as a personal envoy to both Blessed Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. He also worked to establish Marist schools around the world.

Women's Day?

DALLAS MORNING NEWS, Dec. 21 — Women rule — as superintendents, anyway — in Catholic schools.

Of the 125 Catholic school systems in the National Catholic Education Association, 79 of them — 63% — are headed by a woman superintendent. That's in contrast to public school systems, where 85% are led by men, who make up only one-quarter of the teaching workforce, the newspaper reported.

One reason for the difference, the paper suggested, was the long history of women teaching in Catholic schools. For generations, nuns ran the schools, which were founded by their orders.

100 Years Old

THE JOURNAL NEWS (N.Y.), Jan. 5 — When the Ursuline sisters opened the College of New Rochelle in 1904, their goal was to provide women with a rare opportunity for higher education.

One hundred years later, as the college celebrates its centennial, the school continues to provide those opportunities as one of the only all-women institutions left in the country.

Graduates of women's colleges make up only 2% of overall women graduates, the paper noted, but they represent more than 20% of women in Congress and 30% of a Business Week list of rising female stars in corporate America.