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Member Profile - Gonzaga University: More Than Just a School |
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Written On: May/June 2005 |
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Written By: by Ron Dalby |
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Banners hanging from lampposts all over campus proclaim, "Educating People the World Needs Most." Gonzaga University’s staff and students appear to accept this dictum with almost missionary-like zeal.
"It’s doesn’t say 'the people,'" Public Relations Director Dale Goodwin said about the program. "It’s ‘people.’" He goes on to explain that "the people" would be presumptive because there are any number of universities able to train people needed in the world. In other words, if you look at things from a worldwide perspective, Gonzaga is but part of the whole.
Nonetheless, both in the staff and in the student body, there is pride here in being part of something larger than themselves. A first time visitor almost immediately picks up on little things that make this university different. First and foremost, there is no visible rebellion noticeable in the way students dress. You see few belly buttons, nobody has their underwear on display, and everybody looks reasonably neat and clean, even while maintaining a certain “college chic” look to their overall appearance. There’s no doubt these are college students, but nobody is really in your face about it by dressing provocatively or outrageously.
There’s also a less-than-subtle difference in dorm life. Most of us who attended college can remember "dorm mothers," residents or some other adults charged with keeping a modest amount of order amid the chaos of dormitory life. There are no dorm mothers at Gonzaga. Instead, there’s a Jesuit priest living in every residence hall.
Differences exist as well in what the university expects of its students. A quick search through the school catalog quickly produces a big one: nine hours of philosophy and another nine hours of religious studies are part of the core curriculum at Gonzaga. Every undergraduate must take these classes.
Less obvious, but no less important, is the encouragement for staff and students to provide community service as part of their educational experience. Last year, according to Goodwin, Gonzaga undergraduates and graduate students, about 6,100 in all, donated more than 100,000 hours of public service work, mostly in and around eastern Washington.
"We are a principle-based ethics organization," says Father Robert Spitzer, university president, Jesuit priest, philosopher and author to list but a few of his accomplishments. He goes on to say that, "We’re trying to build a culture here where people sort of think, 'I like this.'"
What Spitzer hopes they will like is a rigorous education in the arts and sciences but one that also includes substantial doses of things rarely required on university campuses these days—ethics, philosophy and public service.
"We love to see students who are well-rounded," Dean of Admissions Julie McCulloh said. She is charged with selecting 925 or so incoming freshmen from an applicant pool of about 4,000 every year.
McCulloh wants to see a challenging four years of high school with a GPA of at least 3.1. (The class admitted in the fall of 2004 had a collective GPA of 3.66 and an average SAT score of 1,182.) Beyond that, she says, "We look for someone who is involved in activities they are passionate about." Community service in some form is high on the list of activities that interest her and her staff.
If you’re selected as a Gonzaga student, though, things can get expensive in a hurry. This is a private school and tuition is steep by comparison to public-supported universities. A full-time undergraduate pays $21,730 a year to attend Gonzaga, plus more than $3,000 for living in the dorm, and a host of other fees.
Most students, though, receive financial aid, McCulloh says. The average financial aid package this year was about $17,000 of merit scholarships, grant money and student loans. "The majority was free money," she said.
In the past few years McCulloh has presided over a doubling in size of the incoming freshman class. But, according to Goodwin, "As we’ve increased our enrollment in the last six years, the quality of our incoming freshmen has gone up." Normally, he noted, it’s the other way around. Ninety-six percent of the freshmen who entered Gonzaga in September 2004 were back for the spring semester, a number Goodwin believes is rare at any university.
Goodwin further attributes this success to both a larger applicant pool and an admissions staff that is ever more selective because of the larger number of choices. The 4,000 or so who go through the formal application process each year are culled from an initial list of 40,000 to 50,000 inquiries.
Deciding to raise the number of undergraduates was based on Father Spitzer’s analysis of the university’s financial situation. When he took over as president in 1998, Gonzaga was facing fiscal uncertainty. He saw immediately that the way to raise more revenue was to enroll more students who could meet the university’s standards. Gonzaga’s primary income is from student tuition.
It seems to be paying off. There is a lot of construction on campus these days. Old buildings are being renovated, various programs are being moved into larger quarters, and there are plans afoot for even more. New buildings on campus include a 6,000-seat basketball arena that helps show off Gonzaga’s nationally ranked Bulldogs and, helping balance athletics with academics, the Jundt Art Center and Museum.
Beyond the extra tuition money, these buildings and others in the works have come in part from a $150 million capital campaign that has raised money for endowments to fund financial aid, program support, and the construction or renovation of various brick-and-mortar facilities.
All of these activities show up on President Spitzer’s current list of 47 initiatives. He’s already completed 117 initiatives in the seven years he’s been here and if you spend a few minutes with him, you’ll come away convinced that he will soon succeed in completing the existing 47 as well, no matter how grandiose some of these might seem at first glance.
In the buildings and capital projects section of the list are 11 projects including residence halls, a performing arts center, a theatre renovation and a baseball field. Under academic programs there are six entries including a Power Transmission and Distribution Engineering Program that everyone on campus seems to want to talk about, a program which amply demonstrates Gonzaga’s seeking out opportunities to educate "...people the world needs most."
Gonzaga is creating this program because the faculty looked across the country and saw a need. America’s electrical grid is, at best, barely up to the load. Gonzaga’s staff believes that it’s going to take a new generation of specially trained engineers to seek solutions to this problem. The engineering department is putting together a program designed to train people for this task. According to Father Spitzer this program mixes civil, electrical and software engineering together to meet its goals.
More than anything else, the words “meeting goals” probably best describes what Gonzaga University is all about. Father Spitzer, a self-professed list-maker, carries his two pages of initiatives with him, checking off each of the individual goals as it is completed.
Deep down, he probably wishes everybody else on campus did the same with their own lists of goals, but he is an astute observer of human behavior and knows this will never happen. What will happen, and everybody on campus seems convinced of this, is that Gonzaga will continue “educating people the world needs most.”
Dean McCulloh summed it up when she said, “It’s [Gonzaga] a great place for young people to be challenged.”
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