College Guide
Blog
Ave Maria University, the struggling—and extremely conservative—Catholic university in Naples, Florida, is under new management. The school announced Thursday that,
Jim Towey will be the university’s next president. Towey will be responsible for the day-to-day operations as president when his term begins on July 1, 2011. Thomas S. Monaghan, who currently serves as Chancellor and CEO of AMU will remain Chancellor, but will relinquish the responsibilities of CEO and hence the oversight of the daily operations of the university.
Monaghan wasn’t just Ave Maria’s chancellor. Monaghan, the billionaire founder of Domino’s Pizza and former owner of the Detroit Tigers, created Ave Maria with $250 million of his own money in 2003. The school was originally located in Ypsilanti, Michigan. According to Monaghan, “We wanted to build a major Catholic university in the southern part of the United States with the highest standards.”
It hasn’t worked out so well. As Mariah Blake wrote of Ave Maria for the Monthly back in September/October 2009:
Most of the original faculty have fled or been pushed out, and the quality of the students has tumbled. One current professor told me, “Our student body now is one of the four or five worst in America.” The instability has also wreaked havoc on the school’s reputation: in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, Ave Maria tied for last place in the peer-assessment category, the most important measure in determining a school’s standing. (The school was not officially ranked because U.S. News doesn’t rank schools that land in the bottom tier.) Meanwhile, there are signs that Monaghan’s foundation, which funds the law school and the university, is on the verge of running out of money, in part because Monaghan bet his fortune—and the future of his nonprofits—on the now-crumbling Florida real estate market. Earlier this year, Ave Maria University’s second-longest-standing professor resigned, but not before sending a letter to administrators expressing his alarm at the school’s financial straits. “I fear that all of us (to different degrees) are participating in something that we may later deeply regret,” he wrote, “namely selling to young people and their families [an] educational product that we do not have sufficient reason to believe can be delivered.”
Towey, who served as director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under George W. Bush from 2002 to 2006, is the former president of Latrobe, Pennsylvania’s Saint Vincent College, another extremely conservative Catholic institution.
During his tenure staff, alumni, and students accused Towey of heavy handedness and in February, 2008 nearly three-quarters of the school faculty signed a letter sent to the school’s board of directors that stated:
The faculty at Saint Vincent College is gravely concerned about the current President’s systematic and pervasive disregard for collegiality and shared governance.
We, the tenured faculty of Saint Vincent College, declare to you, the Board of Directors that Mr. H. James Towey as President, has through his actions brought about an unparalleled crisis in the history of this institution. Much damage has already been done the academic integrity and collegial atmosphere that have been hallmarks of Saint Vincent College. Much worse threatens if you do not intervene.
In the absence of clear and decisive action on your part, it is unclear how long this faculty, or the dedicated staff and administrators of Saint Vincent College, can continue to do the jobs we love so well, and this institution will be damaged beyond recognition.
Towey resigned from his position at Saint Vincent in 2009.
Facebook
Twitter
Unnamed on February 14, 2011 9:46 PM:
As an alum of Saint Vincent, I want to dispute the labeling of Saint Vincent as an extremely conservative institution. Saint Vincent is an Orthodox Catholic institution steeped heavily in the liberal arts and Benedictine traditions. Ave Maria was created by the Dominos pizza man.
The only thing "extremely conservative" about the place was Jim Towey. Please do not falsely label my beloved alma mater. Saint Vincent is a reputable Catholic institution of higher education. Ave Maria is a joke of a school and an embarrassment to higher education. In other words, they are not even in the same ballpark.
Ebenezer Scrooge on February 15, 2011 8:01 AM:
The references to Dominos are delicious, but a bit unfair. Monaghan sold his stake awhile ago, IIRC. I don't eat at Dominos because I can do better. Northern NJ (where I live) is smack-dab in the Great Pizza Belt. But I know of no special reason to boycott Dominos that doesn't apply to any other fast food chain.
Stan Forsberg on February 15, 2011 12:43 PM:
Could I bring to attention of the readership the extremely toxic legacy that Mr Towey created and left behind at St Vincent’s College, which has left a priest, Fr Mark Gruber, in effect fighting for his ecclesiastical life because of his outspoken criticism of the academic direction taken by the above named gentlemen. In fact serious questions were raised by the American Association of University Professors by this gentleman’s tenure at St Vincent College, which as of yet have not been answered. Therefore, it may be completely quixotic to view Mr Towey as some messianic figure who is going to come to the rescue of Ave Maria University; in fact, he may succeed in making an extremely bad situation worse. The neoconservatism understanding of Catholicism Mr Towey supports is not the same as doctrinal orthodoxy, never was and never will be; nor will indeed the establishment of a university based on ‘Catholic Principles’ that is extremely well funded by well-meaning individuals ensure the catholicity or fidelity to the teaching magisterium of the Church. It could be argued extremely persuasive that it is the triumph of style over substance. Furthermore, I would even go so far as to say that Mr Towey is an extremely dangerous individual who takes an extreme dislike any individual that would question him; and is vindictive and vicious enough to seek and extract retribution, by being complicit in the vilification of anybody who has not become one of his personal sycophants. In particular, I invite readers to look very closely at the Friends of Father Mark Facebook Page, which is a group of people, surprisingly of which, many of them are of absolutely no faith and committed atheists who are absolutely outraged and campaigning for the vindication of Mark Gruber due to the contumacious attitude of both Mr Towey and the Archabbot of St Vincent’s in refusing to acknowledge the innocence of Father Mark Gruber, particularly, when the culprit in question came forward and admitted that he had downloaded the images, and gave a sworn statement to the police that he was the culprit. Readers of this excellent publication may wish to do a search on the magazine Insider Higher Ed, which specialises in reporting on matters pertaining to higher education, and is not somesome tabloid journalistic rag specialising in salacious nonsense for the facts on Mr Towey, his legacy at St Vincent’s and the scandalous treatment of Fr Mark Gruber.
John on February 15, 2011 2:09 PM:
Daniel Luzer,
You do your readers a disservice when you don't bother to get facts straight. Mariah Blake did not write about Ave Maria University. What you quoted was from an article on the Ave Maria School of Law, which is an entirely separate institution, in a different location, with different management and boards.
But hey, they're both conservative so to you, I guess, what's the difference.
Washington Monthly on February 15, 2011 3:04 PM:
@John, yes, that's an important point to make. The institutions are not one and the same.
As is true of most universities, the law school has a separate board. As is true of many universities, the law school is in a separate location from the undergraduate campus. The quotation from Blake's article is, however, about both the law school and the university. They might be technically separate, like many of the schools at, say, Columbia, but the important part here is not the Catholic brand of conservatism, but role of Thomas Monaghan in running and managing the institution(s).
John on February 15, 2011 4:38 PM:
But stripped to its basics, the only thing Blake said about AMU is that one professor resigned. He had forecast doom and gloom which never transpired. AMU was accredited by SACS last summer -- something that would not have happened if it was financially unstable. It was ranked one of the U.S. "most desirable" schools by Newsweek magazine. Your reference is, at best, misleading and two years out of date.
armand petigru, CD on July 13, 2011 4:57 PM:
Referring again to the spurious "Stan Forsberg" above... this is old news,posted time and again over the past three years by various posters, real or pseudo. The Friends of Father Mark facebook page is essentially moribund and has but a few regular posters.. the rest remain simply because they have lost interest. Nearly fifty people have removed themselves from the page for reasons best known to themselves for the moment.