MSMC’s Jacqueline Doud named Hesburgh Award recipient

Although enrollment, endowments, and academic programs hit major milestones during her tenure at Mount St. Mary’s College, Dr. Jacqueline Powers Doud, MSMC president emerita, was still surprised when she learned that she will be honored with the 2014 Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC Award for outstanding contributions to Catholic higher education.A former member of the board of directors of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, which bestows the award, she had voted for Hesburgh nominee candidates while on the board from 2004-08. However, it never occurred to Doud that she would be in the same league as her mentor, Sister of Charity Ann Ida Gannon, a past president of Mundelein College in Chicago, who was the 1983 recipient the year after Holy Cross Father Hesburgh, then-president of the University of Notre Dame, received the inaugural award.“I was totally shocked to learn a year ago” about being named the award’s 2014 recipient, said Doud, who served for 11 years (2000-2011) as the first lay president of Mount St. Mary’s College founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, and previously (1991-2000) as MSMC’s provost, academic vice president and dean of faculty, as well as professor of education. Under her 20-year leadership, MSMC formed several new academic programs, including the weekend college, master/accelerated bachelor of science/associate degree in nursing, master of business administration, doctor of physical therapy and the film and social justice program. During her presidency, enrollment increased by 56 percent (from 1,973 to 2,864 students); the college endowment rose from $45 million to $100 million; and $19 million was raised in new student scholarships. Pondering her selection as a Hesburgh award recipient, Doud thinks that MSMC’s reputation for providing higher education opportunities for underserved students helped attract ACCU’s attention.“I think maybe MSMC really stands out as an opportunity college,” where 98 percent of the students receive financial aid, noted Doud. “We have extraordinary numbers of underserved students with whom we’ve had great success. I’m very grateful that the work we’re doing at MSMC is being recognized.”Hesburgh awardees must have been employed at a Catholic college or university but are not currently serving as a president (unless retirement is anticipated within the current academic year); must have made “outstanding contributions” and rendered “extended service” to Catholic higher education; and must have contributed to Catholic higher education beyond service rendered to a particular institution. Besides her many years of service at MSMC as dean and president, Doud has been a consultant for many colleges and universities, has chaired numerous accreditation teams and currently serves on the Board of Visitors of the Claremont Graduate University, and the boards of The Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation and the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara. Since her 2011 retirement, she has served as a senior consultant for Academic Search, Inc., where she has assisted in three Catholic Presidential Searches: Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.; Silver Lake College of the Holy Family in Manitowoc, Wis.; and Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md. “Catholic education has a prominent place in the array of choice in American higher education,” said Doud, a graduate of Incarnation School and Holy Family High School in Glendale, who received her B.A. in French from Mundelein College, an M.A. in French literature from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. in higher education from Claremont Graduate University. She notes that Catholic education is very grounded in liberal arts “which is where liberal arts began. The church needs its colleges and universities to develop new knowledge as well as new leaders,” added Doud. In a 2002 article she wrote for The Tidings, she pointed out how Catholic institutions of higher learning explicitly promote values of respect and dignity for every person and attempt to “model and instill in students a sense of responsibility for others, to educate people who will look out for more than themselves, who will think about and advance the common good.”Doud will receive the Hesburgh award, which comes with a $1,000 gift, at ACCU’s annual meeting awards banquet Feb. 1 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C. The next day, she will moderate an ACCU panel on the 1965 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, “Gaudium et Spes” (Joy and Hope), summarizing the Vatican II Council and giving an outline of the Church’s social teachings in a changing world.{gallery width=100 height=100}gallery/2013/0830/doud/{/gallery}