Jesuit-run Loyola University Maryland inaugurates its first lay president

BALTIMORE — The love and goodwill for Loyola College Maryland’s new president was palpable throughout Terrence M. Sawyer’s Oct. 12 inauguration because the twenty fifth chief of Baltimore’s Jesuit college.

From the second Sawyer appeared on the finish of an extended procession of robed college members and different dignitaries inside Reitz Enviornment, sustained applause from greater than 1,800 standing visitors washed over him because the beaming New Jersey native gently positioned a hand over his coronary heart in appreciation.

Extra ovations greeted Sawyer all through the ceremony, with some college students even breaking into shouts of “Ter-ry! Ter-ry!”

Sawyer has served in quite a lot of capacities on the college for greater than 20 years, most lately as senior vp. The primary lay president in Loyola’s 170-year historical past, he and his spouse, Courtney, now dwell on Loyola’s Evergreen campus at Armiger Home.

On the climax of the ceremony, James D. Forbes, a Loyola trustee and former chairman of the board of trustees, draped a gleaming, chained silver insignia over Sawyer’s shoulders as an emblem of Sawyer’s new workplace.

Standing beneath green-and-gray material that adorned the rafters, the brand new president then gave his inaugural deal with — expressing his love for Loyola and outlining his desires for the varsity.

“I stand right here immediately with overwhelming gratitude for the religion and belief that has been positioned in me,” stated Sawyer, a longtime parishioner of Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland.

Sawyer highlighted Loyola’s custom of Jesuit excellence, which stretches again to a category in 1852 that consisted of simply 95 younger males and now features a scholar physique of roughly 3,900 undergraduates of each sexes.

Transferring into the long run, he stated, the Loyola group should proceed to develop and maintain wealthy relationships. The varsity have to be daring and brave. And leaders should underscore efforts to foster “transformative, moral and courageous leaders,” he stated.

“Our nation and our world face urgent points,” Sawyer declared. “Democracy is threatened. Local weather change is destroying lives and communities. Members of our society proceed to really feel unseen and unvalued. Fact and details are sometimes elusive, and we battle to have interaction in civil discourse.”

Loyola’s Jesuit mission allows the varsity to “acknowledge the complexity and systemic challenges confronted in so many areas of political, cultural and financial spheres,” he stated.

“It teaches our college students to have the braveness to advocate for essentially the most weak amongst us,” Sawyer stated. “And all through all of it, we always problem our college students to grow to be humble, moral leaders who can convey optimistic change to our world.”

Sawyer, who succeeds Jesuit Father Brian Linnane as president, stated Loyola embraces the Jesuit observe of seeing God in all issues, permitting all relationships to maneuver and alter people.

In the course of the ceremony, numerous leaders from the Jesuits, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, town of Baltimore, Loyola College Maryland and others addressed Sawyer.

Some introduced items, together with retired Auxiliary Bishop Denis J. Madden of Baltimore, who gave Sawyer a bust of St. Ignatius of Loyola — founding father of the Society of Jesus and patron saint of Baltimore.

Throughout an Oct. 11 Mass of thanksgiving, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori provided congratulations to Sawyer and famous that the phrases “college” and “Catholic” imply the identical factor: “a want to grasp issues in line with their entire, to discover the deep connections amongst diversified fields of inquiry, a connection we imagine comes from the truth that God is the supply of all fact.”

“In an age of cultural and mental fragmentation, Loyola is poised to render nonetheless higher service, each to the Catholic mental custom and to the broader tradition,” Lori stated.

The varsity will help “us and our contemporaries to combine religion and cause and … to beat dead-end, polarizing ideologies of the precise and of the left — ideologies that refuse to view actuality by way of a broader lens, the lens of cause illumined by religion,” he stated.

The brand new president has a historical past of aggressively working to make Loyola a extra welcoming place to folks of all backgrounds, stated Christian McNeill, a 2022 graduate of Loyola from New Jersey who serves on Loyola’s board of trustees.

This 12 months’s freshman class of 1,290 college students is just not solely the biggest class in Loyola’s historical past, however with 39% figuring out as college students of shade, it is also its most numerous.

Sawyer “has been a transformative chief for our college in regard to scholar growth, range, fairness and inclusion.” McNeill advised the Catholic Overview, Baltimore’s archdiocesan information outlet.

Claire Perkins, a Loyola senior and president of the scholar physique, added that Sawyer is a pal of everybody on campus and has been very approachable whereas strolling its grounds.

“I’ve seen college students have simply introduced issues proper as much as him, which is unbelievable,” the Connecticut native stated.

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Matysek is managing editor of the Catholic Overview, information outlet of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.