Dear Loyola community,
This Women’s History Month, I invite us all to celebrate the generations of women who helped build and strengthen our university into what it is today and those women who are leading us into the future.
Women have helped shape our institution for over a century. The first women graduated from Loyola in 1913 despite facing several barriers to education. Roughly a decade later, female pharmacy students started Loyola’s first sorority, and the school welcomed its first full-time female professor in 1928. As male students were drafted to fight in World War II, women increasingly took up leadership positions around campus – including overseeing The Maroon. Most recently, of course, Tania Tetlow became the first woman to serve as Loyola’s president, shepherding our school for four years.
Today, we are mindful that we are building upon the legacy of those early trailblazers. I’m encouraged when I think of the bright and talented Loyola students and faculty following in their footsteps and enhancing our community. Our undergraduate class is 65% female, and women hold leadership positions in the administration and our colleges. Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Tanuja Singh; Deans Maria Calzada, Shelli Collins, and Madeleine Landrieu; and Associate Deans Carmen Balthazar, Kathy Barnett, and Alice Clark are just a few of the women who represent Loyola’s values “to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work for a more just world.”
I look forward to seeing you there.
Gratefully,
Justin Daffron, S.J.
Interim President
