Chicagoland

Father Garanzini is leaving Loyola a stronger institution

By Michelle Martin | Staff writer
Sunday, May 31, 2015

When Jesuit Father Michael Garanzini arrived as president at Loyola University Chicago in 2001, he thought he’d be a short-timer.

The university, he said, was in a decline, with enrollment under capacity, morale falling and revenues failing to cover expenses. Garanzini had experience with institutions in turnaround mode before, and knew that people who make unpopular decisions rarely become popular themselves.

“The turnaround people have to make a lot of tough decisions, so you’re usually there two or three years and then you get out of the way for someone who will come and in and say, no more of that meanness,” he said.

Now, 14 years later, Garanzini is preparing to step aside while maintaining a connection to the university as chancellor and devoting more time to his responsibilities as secretary for higher education for the Society of Jesus.

When he steps down June 30, provost John Pelissero will serve as interim president until a new president is appointed.

It was a good time for a transition, Garanzini said, because the university is doing well. Enrollment is up, the books are balanced and there’s been a bit of a building boom, with the latest building — a new home for the Quinlan School of Business — set to open on the northeast corner of State and Pearson streets next fall.

That, in turn, has made room for a new effort, a two-year college for students who will get their associates’ degrees and prepare to transition into four-year institutions paying only about $1,700 a year in tuition and without taking out student loans. The college restricts its enrollment to young people whose household income is low enough for them to qualify for federal and state grant programs.

The prospect of building new programs and finding ways to move forward in the midst of cutting back helped Garanzini forge a positive relationship with the university community, he said.

That was a lesson he started to learn in the 1970s, when, as a young Jesuit alumnus, he was put on the board of St. Louis University. “They went through some tough times in the ’70s, and I learned a lot about what happens when you try to just cut, when you don’t really have a vision,” Garanzini said.

“It turned out to be a very welcoming faculty (at Loyola) even with the restrictions and the things we had to do, and I think that’s because I learned over the years that institutions in trouble, institutions with challenges that seem to be nipping away at their fabric have to do investing in positive growth even as they’re trying to trim and get a hold of their present situation. The community, especially an academic community, needs to know there’s a real positive future. They’re places where there’s a lot of idealism, universities are.”

Loyola also had some natural advantages, he said.

“There was a very welcoming Chicago community, a very strong institution because of its core, with lots of jitters about the present situation,” he said. “I survived the first two or three years saying, ‘We’ve got to control, we’ve got to invest. We’ve got to recruit students, we’re under capacity. The faculty need to know there’s going to be a positive future here.’”

The deficits ended within 2½ years, he said, and starting in about 2004, the university was able to plan for improved infrastructure and look for new programs to attract more students. Those efforts were successful with total enrollment growing from about 12,000 to 16,000 and full-time enrollment going from about 10,000 to 15,000.

“What’s attracted the students has been campus improvements, higher faculty morale, building dorms, really dressing up the campus to fit what kids have in their mind for what makes a real college campus,” Garanzini said. “It’s also taking really seriously something that I’ve believed in a long time. If you compare yourself to everyone else, you never live up. DePaul does their thing, the University of Chicago does their thing, Northwestern does their thing, Roosevelt does their thing. What does Loyola do? That’s the Jesuit thing.”

The “Jesuit thing” has always included academic rigor, a sound core curriculum, critical thinking and argumeny, he said, but it has to be more than that, Garanzini said.

“Every school says they do critical thinking and every school says they’re ethical and so on,” he said. “What the Jesuit thing is, is the liberally educated person who has social responsibilities because of their training and their good fortune in being given the opportunity for this kind of education. That requires you to be a continuous learner, which means you have to have a wide foundation. It requires you to be willing to put yourself out in your community as someone who will stand for something. The whole business of social justice and leadership are part of the Jesuit package.”

That’s part of what he’s working on as the Jesuit secretary for higher education, working directly under the Jesuit superior general, Adolfo Nicolas.

When the superior visited Loyola last fall to speak to the leaders of Jesuit colleges and universities, Garanzini said, Nicolas asked them to consider what the founder of their order would say if he saw their institutions now.

“Is this the kind of institution that Ignatius would start?” he said. “Or would he want us to do something different? Would he ask us how our institutions are accessible to the poor? How they improve the societies around them in terms of being more just? Because those are often more second- tier questions, behind the question of how we can be a competitive institution and get the best faculty and the best students. And if that’s the main question, you’re judging yourself by pretty secular measures.”

As chancellor, the projects Garanzini intends to work on reflect that focus. They include Arrupe College; setting up an endowment fund to investigate health disparities among the poor, especially those in the collar communities near Loyola’s medical school in Maywood; and the completion of the business school campaign as the business school works to build relationships with Jesuit business schools around the world and emphasizing the “Jesuit dimension” of social responsibility.

Overall, he said, he’s pleased to be able to hand over the reins now.

“You don’t want the institution to become too much dependent on your style, on seeing things the way you see them,” he said. “The best thing about an institution is the turnover. We get new students every year, we get new faculty when faculty retire, and you need that turnover at the top, too.”

Topics:

  • loyola university chicago
  • michael garanzini
  • jesuit education

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