AJCU President Honored with Hesburgh Award

Return to News and Initiatives > Press Releases

February 12, 2010

Washington, DC -- On Saturday, January 30, 2010, Fr. Charles L. Currie, S.J., president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) was presented with the Theodore M. Hesburgh C.S.C. Award from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) at the ACCU’s Annual Meeting Awards Banquet. The Hesburgh Award, named for the long-serving president of the University of Notre Dame, is the oldest honor bestowed by the ACCU and is presented to a leader that has made “outstanding contributions” to Catholic higher education.

"Already the recipient of nine honorary degrees," the award's citation read, "Father Currie is known as a champion of higher education, a tireless advocate for international justice, and a calming voice among his peers. His lifetime contributions to the Catholic Church, the academy, and the world community make him a thoroughly fitting recipient of the Association's highest honor, the Theodore M. Hesburgh C.S.C. Award."

Catholic college and university presidents, leaders of national higher education associations, family members and friends, honored Fr. Currie for his contributions to Catholic higher education as a priest, university president and administrator, faculty member, rector, and as AJCU president for the last 13 years.

Fr. Currie, who received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from The Catholic University of America, was appointed to the AJCU presidency in February of 1997, after a more than 40-year career in higher education. Among his many leadership roles, he served as president of both Wheeling College (now Wheeling Jesuit University) from 1972-1982 and Xavier University from 1982-1986, directed Georgetown University’s Bicentennial Celebration, and served as a chemistry faculty member at Georgetown. Fr. Currie has also dedicated his time to serving as a board member of several organizations, as indicated by the award's citation: "He has served on boards as diverse as the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), the Washington Higher Education Secretariat, Executives in Church-Related Higher Education, the American Council on Education's Commission on International Initiatives, the International Committee on Jesuit Higher Education, and the Vatican Observatory Foundation."

In Fr. Currie’s acceptance speech, he emphasized the importance of both courage and civility in contributing to the work of Catholic higher education and claimed that Fr. Hesburgh exhibited both characteristics in his service as a university president and a higher education leader.

“Courage and civility are both synonymous with the life of Fr. Ted Hesburgh and the great leaders of Catholic higher education. Both qualities are desperately needed today,” said Fr. Currie. “I would submit that an essential part of our identity today in Catholic higher education is to be advocates and exemplars of courage and civility for our students, for one another and for the larger world around us.”

When citing other men and women of faith who demonstrated courage and civility in their roles as college and university leaders, Fr. Currie mentioned such names as Sr. Ann Ida Gannon, BVM, president of Mundelein College; Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington, DC; David O’Brien, an historian of American Catholicism and a former professor at the College of the Holy Cross; Dr. Monika Hellwig, a noted Catholic theologian and the former president of The Catholic Theological Society of America and ACCU; and Sisters Dorothy Kelly, former president of the College of New Rochelle, Maureen Fay, OP, former president of the University of Detroit Mercy, and Collette Mahoney, former president of Marymount Manhattan College.

Making note of the often polarized society and Church in which we live, Fr. Currie encouraged individuals to seek ways to be civil and to be partners in dialogue. He challenged those in Catholic higher education to support an ongoing dialogue between presidents, trustees, theologians and bishops and to share and promote our Catholic identity with the wider world.

“Our Catholic identity should not be some sort of museum piece we are trying to protect, said Fr. Currie, “but a dynamic reality being forged in a complex dialogue with our surrounding culture.”

Fr. Currie congratulated those in attendance at the ACCU event for doing their own good work on behalf of Catholic higher education, and he acknowledged their efforts to be role models of civility and courageous leaders committed to upholding the Catholic intellectual and social traditions.

“It will never be easy, but we can be confident of what we have to offer to higher education in the best of the Catholic intellectual and social traditions, taught and lived in enriching educational communities,” said Fr. Currie. “We also offer a host of both/and rather than either/or solutions to supposed dichotomies: being serious about academic excellence and our Catholic identity; being serious about learning and scholarship and about educating for justice; developing critical intelligence and ethical, moral concern; being competitive and collaborative.”

In his closing remarks, Fr. Currie emphasized the importance of the Catholic higher education community working together to provide strength to each other and to lead Catholic colleges with courage and conviction.

“May we go forth energized by one another and empowered by a God who did not give us ‘a spirit of cowardice, but rather of power and love and self-control.’”

Fr. Currie is the 28th recipient of the Theodore M. Hesburgh C.S.C. Award. To see a copy of Fr. Currie's speech, please click here.