President's Message

The next Greatest Generation

by Thomas M. Mengler, J.D., St. Mary’s University President


I am humbled by the faith and confidence our Trustees and the Marianist Provincial Council have extended to Mona and me. I feel proud to be associated with St. Mary’s University. Since June, I have become ever more conscious of the ways in which St. Mary’s, for 160 years, has been a gateway for students and the San Antonio community.

I feel pride in our dedicated faculty and staff who work tirelessly to ensure that we graduate students formed in faith and prepared to lead purposeful professional lives.

I want you also to know that I am confident in our ability over the next 10 years to confront our challenges and to capitalize on opportunity, and I am bullish on St. Mary’s future.

As I was preparing for the inauguration, I was drawn to thoughts of my parents, Rosalie and Ray Mengler, who passed away 10 and 20 years ago. My parents were members of the generation Tom Brokaw coined “the Greatest Generation” — the courageous men and women raised during the Great Depression who became adults while fighting World War II. They lived fulfilling lives, grounded in and centered on faith in God, and with an overwhelming sense of obligation to God, to family, to community and to country. When they returned from war, they worked together to build the greatest, most productive democratic society the world had ever seen — earning the name the Greatest Generation.

They embodied and put into action enduring values: God and family first. Self-sacrifice for the greater good. Duty, integrity, courage. Gratitude for blessings, despite hardships.

These may seem familiar to you, as some of our own Marianist values. Mary, with grace and serenity, urges us to follow through completely, with our eyes always on the mission. To act with integrity and compassion, to sacrifice for the common good, to do all that we are obliged to do.

So what are the uncompromising responsibilities of those of us who make up the St. Mary’s University community? I believe we are obliged to do three things.

First, promote and expect excellence from all members of St. Mary’s, to hold one another accountable for St. Mary’s future. Members of the Greatest Generation didn’t look to the other guy to complete the mission. Together, this community will develop a strategic vision over the course of the next year which will position us to become the finest Catholic university in the Southwest. Now, more than ever, we need the help of our alumni — including your financial help — to invest in our future and not wait for someone else to contribute. We need you to invest in our talented faculty, our programs and our facilities. Most of all, we need you to invest in our students.

Our second obligation is to promote a robust and pervasive Catholicity and Marianist charism, not only in our undergraduate programs, but in our graduate and professional programs as well. Today, at every Catholic university, the professed religious are fewer in number. Increasingly, the duty rests on our lay faculty and staff at St. Mary’s to nurture and sustain our Catholic identity and Marianist charism.

Our third obligation, in effect, follows from St. Mary’s Catholic and Marianist identities. We know that a core principle of St. Mary’s is that we grow and mature in community, through community, and for community.

Blessed William Joseph Chaminade’s profound insight is that we become more fully human, not in isolation, but in the experiences of life and in the ways in which we serve God, family, workplace, community and country.

St. Mary’s residential college experience is an important key to becoming more fully human through community. Our residential students are surrounded by faculty, staff and fellow students who treat one another with dignity, respect and an embracing concern. But there’s a lot more that we can, and should, do. Chaminade’s insight about the importance of community speaks also to the ways in which students develop professional skills and values. Employers are looking for the skills and values of the excellent professional — the hard skills of effective writing

and speaking, critical thinking and problem solving. And the skills and values that make us more fully human: teamwork, respect for fellow workers, listening, collaborating, and practicing honesty, leadership and integrity.

In the next few years, my colleagues and I need to change and innovate. We need to work together to provide more experiential and mentorship opportunities for our students so they see firsthand what is required to become an outstanding professional. I believe that if we follow through on these three obligations together, we will become the finest Catholic university in the Southwest. I ask you to join me in prayer that the students of St. Mary’s University will embrace our Catholic and Marianist values and become the next Greatest Generation.