April 11, 2018
St. Mary’s University is pleased to announce Alicia Cordoba Tait, D.M.A., will serve as the inaugural Beirne Director of the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Mary’s University, beginning June 1, 2018.
Alicia earned a Doctor of Musical Arts from The Juilliard School in New York, and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Music from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Currently, she is the advisory board chair of the Benedictine Pedagogy Conference at Benedictine University, a program she founded in 2006 to help advance the hallmarks of a Benedictine education.
Alicia has served in leadership positions both in mission and academics at Benedictine, where she began as an adjunct faculty member in 1998 before achieving tenure and promotion to professor of Music in the College of Liberal Arts.
Up until last year, she held two key positions at Benedictine – the assistant to the president for Mission Integration and director of the Center for Mission and Identity. Through her years at Benedictine, she also served as acting director of Campus Ministry, chair of the Department of Music and the Department of Fine and Performing Arts.
Alicia’s long list of academic and professional presentations on mission, Catholicism, leadership, music and the arts is noteworthy. Alicia works at the national level with the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), the Association for Benedictine Colleges and Universities, and the Benedictine High Schools National Network to develop mission and administrative leadership programs.
Her work at Benedictine University to develop the institution’s Center for Mission and Identity received national recognition for its structure, programming, and overall institutional involvement. And her leadership has helped lead Benedictine University to national recognition as a leader in Catholic higher education.
We are excited to announce Dr. Tait as the inaugural director for the Center, and we look forward to the good work ahead. Please join us in welcoming Alicia to our St. Mary’s community.