On a bright and warm April afternoon in 1987, I was standing in the kitchen of our house in South Bend, Indiana when the wall phone rang. With a timbre that sounded like an army marching on gravel, the voice announced, “This is Father Neville at Saint Joseph’s University. Are you still interested in the position in our theology department?”
I was and still am. I also found a new friend. As Fr. Neville prepared to drive me to Philadelphia for my return flight, David Carpenter, near the end of his first year at St. Joe’s after a prior year studying in India, jumped in the car as well. We raised a glass just last week to celebrate our long friendship and all the blessings St. Joe’s has brought us, including a mention of our late departmental colleague Fr. Jim Neville, a good man. The right place at the right time found us, and we found it in the many good people here then and now.
Last month, it was an email, rather than the phone, that brought news of the Voluntary Separation Program (VSP) for tenured faculty members. I rejoice for my colleagues who will receive the VSP. While I’ve heard names, it’s their news to share. I can offer that we will be losing some spectacular faculty colleagues, and last week, through one staff retirement, the superhero of IT.
St. Joe’s must begin anew, not only to survive but to thrive. Yet growth always comes with a cost. In this case, the real cost will be incurred in the hemorrhaging of institutional memory and the deep knowledge of how things are supposed to work — and perhaps most of all, in the fact that some of our very best teachers will heretofore grace our classrooms rarely, if at all.
Furthermore, the prospect of a wave of resignations has reminded me that over the last fifteen months, we’ve buried too many colleagues who, in a phrase from Dostoyevsky, “…made us better perhaps than we are:” Nick Robak, Joe Feeney, Ron Wendling and his dear spouse, Mary — to name just those whose memorials I’ve attended during that brief time span.
Our communion of saints, living and dead — students, alumni, faculty and staff — has “…made us better perhaps than we are.” They have made St. Joe’s a place that can thrive in its new incarnations during this decade and the ones to come. Who we have been has made possible what we can yet become.
Paul F. Aspan, Ph.D., is the chair and an associate professor of theology and religious studies.
