'A GOOD SORT OF BUSY'

The Baltimore Sun

It has been a decade since Mary Pat Seurkamp arrived in Baltimore to become the first permanent lay president of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.

"It doesn't seem possible 10 years have gone by," Seurkamp, 60, said from her office on the North Charles Street campus. "It has been so busy, but a good sort of busy."

Seurkamp has presided over Notre Dame at a time when women's colleges across the country, and here in Maryland, have been admitting men, a move seen as necessary for survival.

But Notre Dame retains all-female status in its college even as its coeducational graduate and part-time programs have grown to dwarf the number of full-time undergraduates.

And expansion continues. Seurkamp will preside over the opening of a school of pharmacy in 2008, a four-year graduate program leading to a doctoral degree.

"We looked at the need for pharmacists and at the work we were already doing in educating women scientists," Seurkamp said. "We see it as something that can build on our strength while meeting a real need in the country."

Like all of Notre Dame's graduate programs, the new pharmacy school will be coed, eventually adding 240 students to the campus. But Seurkamp notes that 65 percent of students in pharmacy schools today are women. She expects it to help attract undergraduate students who look to a pharmacy career.

Seurkamp said that Notre Dame has been a wonderful place to spend the past decade. "Plus, we fell in love with Baltimore," she said.

Already beyond the average tenure for college presidents, Seurkamp said that she doubted she would be at Notre Dame another 10 years.

"But most likely another four or five." This is a difficult time for women's colleges. Many, including Goucher, Hood and Villa Julie in Maryland, have gone coed to keep up their enrollment. Do you think it is important that the College of Notre Dame survived as a single-sex school?

You are right, it is a challenge to be a single-sex school. It is not the norm. When I was going to school, it was assumed I would go to a women's college, which I did, Webster's, a Catholic school in St. Louis, which is not a women's college any more.

But I received a wonderful education there and a deep appreciation of what women's colleges can do for students.

I don't want to ever suggest that women's colleges are for everyone. The strength of our system of higher education is its diversity. I understand that different kinds of students are going to thrive in different kinds of environments. But all the research, including some new studies out of Indiana University, continues to underscore the positive benefits of women's colleges.

So I do believe they are a critical part of the overall higher educational system, a place where many women find they can achieve their goals quite successfully. The battle for survival for women's colleges often includes a declining number of applications, as fewer high school girls seek out single-sex schools, and deep discounting of the tuition rate to attract students. Is that the case at Notre Dame?

If you look at the trend over the last 10 years, in our tier of schools, selective small institutions, you will see that first-year discounting has been increasing pretty steadily.

When I came here, I faced the opposite problem: We were already discounting at a higher-than-average rate. So we committed to pulling back more into the average range and that's what we've done over the last seven or eight years.

Part of the reason you see that discounting is that the demographics of the country are changing. So what you see happening nationwide is what you see happening to us: more students of color, more immigrants, more low-income students. We face the issues of access and affordability while, at the same time, on a relative basis, aid from federal and state governments is declining. So the challenges we face as a women's college are ones that all colleges face to some extent. Notre Dame is also a Catholic college. How does that fit into the institution's identity when it comes to attracting students?

The attraction in this day and age is not just for Catholics, but for all students who want the kind of environment where there is a focus and attention on faith development and spirituality. About 50 percent of our students are Catholics, but I think if you talk to any of our students who are not Catholic, you would find that their ability to continue to explore their faith here, to understand it more fully, happens as much for them as for Catholic students.

Whether or not this is an attraction is, like so many things, a matter of the right fit for the right student, finding the environment that supports them and that deals with what they find important.

But the fact that we are a religious institution is part of a real commitment in institutions like ours to issues of social justice. There is obviously an increased emphasis across the board on community service in high school and college, but I think you find that the focus on service, the commitment to serve, is grounded differently in institutions like ours. How is your enrollment?

Overall, it is the highest it has ever been, 3,300 students. The graduate program has seen the most significant growth during my tenure. It has gone from about 600 students to 1,600 students. The Weekend College was already in place when I came and we instituted the Accelerated College to address additional needs of part-time undergraduates. Those students, largely working adults, account for another 1,000 students. Then there are another 550 to 600 in the women's college.

Each program is expected to carry itself financially. Each major academic division generates net positive revenue. But, at the same time, the diversity on campus with these three vibrant components allows us to be the kind of institution that we are. The women's college will always be at the core of the definition of the College of Notre Dame, but the Weekend College and Accelerated College and the graduate programs are just as important. Together the three give us the financially healthy and academically vibrant institution that we have. Is that the number of students in the women's college you would like?

It has declined slightly over the last 10 years, but if you look at it carefully, it is in the normal range for Notre Dame. Our history over the last 30 years has been in the 500 to 600 range.

We are pleased with the number of applicants we get and with the selectivity. The average SAT has been pretty consistent, around 1040 to 1050 with a GPA of 3.3 or 3.4. Our honors program has an SAT average around 1240 with a GPA of 3.9.

To maintain enrollment, some schools have decided to adjust their academic standards. We have chosen not to do that. It is important that we maintain academic quality and that has meant that in some years, there are fewer students. What do you think was the biggest challenge you faced when you arrived 10 years ago?

There are two major things that I knew I needed to focus on. One was the renewal of some of our facilities through renovation as well as building new facilities, particularly for science.

The other was focusing on developing our academic programs, refreshing our offerings. These are things that never go away.

Over the last 10 years, we have invested in our campus and in developing our academic programs. We have established endowed professorships and increased scholarships.

The college is in a very good place right now, but you can't take your eye off of those things. Is there anything that has surprised you about the last 10 years?

Well, I guess that you think that after you've done something for a decade, it ought to get easier. But it really doesn't. My senior team and I often look at each other and wonder when we are going to get a little breathing room.

But you talk to presidents anywhere and they all say the same thing. You get one thing addressed and there is always something else on the horizon.

I will say that the longer I have been here, the more deeply I feel gratitude to the School Sisters of Notre Dame. I say this all the time to students and parents, what a wonderful gift they gave to all of us. This college was ahead of its time, a college for women at a time when there were not a lot of Catholic colleges around.

And its commitment from the very beginning was to international issues, an understanding that students had to be exposed to a more global perspective.

Our students understand something the SSNDs say in a powerful phrase, that we are educating women who can change the world. This is not some commencement address line, students clearly understand the power as individuals they have to bring about change.

michael.hill@baltsun.com

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