Thomas Breen photo
New Haven’s Albertus Magnus College, which has recently stepped up its commitment to closer town-gown relations, inaugurated its 14th president on Friday afternoon with calls for study, prayer, service, and community.
Around 200 faculty, students, college administrators and elected officials attended the inauguration of Marc Camille. The ceremony took place from 2 to 4:30 p.m. outside Rosary Hall, the college’s first building on its campus on the Prospect Hill/Newhallville border that was acquired by the Dominican Sisters of Peace when they founded the school in 1925.
The ceremony pivoted around the four pillars of the Dominican order of the Catholic church, which the small 1,500-student school holds closely as its guiding principles: study, prayer, service and community.
Although Friday represented his official inauguration as president, Camille has already proved himself committed to the latter two Dominican pillars of service and community as he has thrown himself into a variety of town-gown partnerships since taking the helm of the college in June 2017.
Earlier this year alone, Camille traveled with Mayor Toni Harp and a delegation from New Haven to Changsha, China on a sister city-building trip. He spearheaded a partnership with the New Haven Promise scholarship program that will fund upwards of $80,000 in tuition and housing for individual New Haven Promise students who attend Albertus Magnus over the course of their four years at the school. And he has pledged to pony up $300,000 to help the city renovate and reopen the Ralph Walker Skating Rink.
Friday’s ceremony began with a processional, as a bagpiper led students, faculty and administrators, carrying banners announcing the four pillars of the Dominican order, up Prospect Street and through the gates of the college.
Albertus Magnus Vice President for Academic Affairs Sean O’Connell served as the emcee for the ceremony. He described Albertus’s founding mission to extend the pursuit of truth to as many people as possible. Albertus was founded as a Catholic women’s college in 1925, decades before Yale University began admitting female students and 16 years after Wesleyan University voted to stop admitting female students.
“Think about how courageous, how revolutionary” that founding mission was, O’Connell said.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro remembered when she taught a course on international politics at Albertus soon after graduating from Columbia University with her master’s degree in 1966. She said that the Dominican sisters at the school were consistently scandalized by the short skirts that she wore each day.
“Now more than ever, a fight for truth is vital,” she said. “Now more than ever, a college degree is vital” for economic stability. She applauded Albertus Magnus for opening its doors to as wide a public as it can.
“The ivy tower cannot be an impenetrable fortress,” she said.
State Sen. Gary Winfield, describing himself as a “skeptical truthteller,” praised Camille for participating in a talk that Winfield gave at the school earlier this year for Black History Month.
“I believe in this president,” he said. He said he did not know Camille too well but, reflecting on his commitment to New Haven thus far, he said, “your actions tell us who you are.”
“If it weren’t for your vision,” Mayor Toni Harp said, addressing the Dominican sisters who founded the then women’s college nearly a century ago, “women in this country would be in a very different place. So thank you for having that vision.”
“Thank you for including me” in this ceremony, she said, “and by extension, for including all of the residents of the city of New Haven.”
Paul Broadie, the president of Gateway Community College and Housatonic Community College, spoke of Camille’s commitment to collaborating with other local higher ed institutions. He described Camille as smart, energetic, engaging and collaborating. Referencing Albertus’s mascot, Broadie said, “this flying falcon lives and breathes the pillar of community.”
After the parade of religious and academic and political speakers finished their praise-filled speeches for Camille, Leonard Blair, the Archbishop of the Diocese of Hartford, oversaw the blessing of the school’s mace and presidential medallion, which were subsequently bestowed on the new president.
During his presidential address, Camille recalled how he started his career as an admissions counsellor at Mt. Ida College. He said that admissions counsellors must serve as the voice of an institution, telling stories of what the school and its students represent.
“A college president,” he said, “should be the chief storyteller. We must master our institutional narrative, both candid and compelling.”
He shared a story of a letter written by the first chaplain of the school, Arthur Chandler, just a few months after it was founded, back in April 1926.
Chandler said that Albertus Magnus was not merely a college; it was also a movement for supporting education as the development of the entire human being.
“Albertus Magnus College intends to build proportionally mind and will and being,” Camille quoted Chandler as writing.
On Friday afternoon, mind, will, and being were all directed squarely towards the school’s mission of instilling “practical wisdom”: learning that can be put to use in the real world, including in collaboration with the community in which Albertus Magnus resides.
Click on the video to watch the inauguration.