“I’m hoping all our graduates can say, ‘It was good for me to be there.’”
That is the wish of Sr. Mary George O’Toole ’51, RSM, Ph.D., who is resigning as Vice President for Sponsorship and Mission Integration and taking on a part-time position as archivist for the college. Looking back on her many years of full-time service at the college, she says teaching sociology on campus was her most loved contribution, because she tried to give students all they would need to take the next step in their own career, whether that was further education or immediate work in related fields. “I loved my students and, hopefully, they knew it; they tried and most of the time succeeded in meeting my expectations,” she says. But for Sister Mary George, teaching was also a sacred duty, that of fostering knowledge and values. When she taught course material, she saw it as teaching the truth.
Once she became Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and then a vice president, she missed the relational aspect of being a teacher in close touch with students. She says she held her students to high standards and they worked hard. With a smile, she remembers that one of them jumped for joy all over campus, yelling “I got an A! I got an A!” after learning the results from a challenging exam.
Sister Mary George hopes and expects that the Mercy heritage will remain front-and-center at the college. Sister is excited about her new position in the college archives, which are located on the first floor of St. Joseph’s Hall. She can be reached at mgotoole@sjcme.edu.
