As we come to the end of the spring semester and the 2011-12 academic year, I wish to thank all of you for your extraordinary work that enabled us to continue providing our students a rigorous and transformative education. I am also grateful for your commitment to our collective efforts to strengthen our educational and scholarly community so that we can all thrive professionally and personally. There is indeed much for us to be proud of this academic year and to anticipate in the next.

All BCLA faculty members who applied for tenure and promotion were successful. Please congratulate our newly tenured associate professors: Nicholas Rosenthal (History); Maire Ford (Psychology); Anna Muraco (Sociology); Anna Harrison, David Sanchez and Tracy Tiemeier (Theological Studies). Also congratulate faculty members promoted to full professor: Karen Mary Davalos (Chicana/o Studies); Joseph LaBrie (Psychology); and Richard Fox (Political Science).

Several of our faculty members have received external grants and prestigious awards. Associate Dean Jeffrey Wilson has been working with faculty in shepherding the growing number of external grant applications. Professor Jason Baehr (Philosophy) was awarded a $1 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation for a three-year “Intellectual Virtues and Education Project.” Special thanks to the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects and Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations for their professional assistance in making these applications. Also of note: Professor Lawrence Tritle (History) recieved the Daum Professorship; K.J. Peters (English) was awarded the John R. Popiden Distinguished Service Award; Thomas P. Rausch (Theological Studies) won the Rains Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity; and Kelly Younger (English) was awarded the President’s Fritz B. Burns Distinguished Teaching Award.

BCLA extends our thanks for the service of several faculty members are leaving leadership positions. They include: Professor Veronique Flambard-Weisbart, who served for five years as chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures; Professor Juan Mah y Busch, acting director of the Bioethics Institute (2011-12); Professor David Hardy, acting chair of the Department of Psychology (spring); Professor Joseph Earley, acting chair of Economics (spring); Professor Barbara Rico, acting director of the Catholic Studies Program (spring); and Professor Saba Soomekh, acting director of the Jewish Studies Program (spring).

Bellarmine College also expresses lasting gratitude to Professor Nancy Jabbra, founder of the Department of Women’s Studies, who is retiring. We wish her well in the next phase of her inspiring and productive life.

As part of our student engagement and retention strategy, we launched the “Finish in Four” initiative overseen by Professor David Killoran and Assistant Dean Cathy Machado, whose work in this area deserves commendation. The BCLA Student Ambassadors group was created to provide peer mentoring and serve as the College’s student advisory council. Several departments are establishing learning communities to enhance students’ immersion in their major and the university community. Efforts have also been made to improve student advising and support. The college established a new fund to support student advising, research and conference travel, which several departments utilized. Not surprisingly our retention rate continues to go up. The first year retention rose from 87.28 percent in fall 2010 to 90.87 percent in fall 2011.

Thanks to a $20,000 grant from the Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a fund of the McCormick Foundation, LMU psychology professor Judith Foy’s Bookworm Project is receiving support to provide literacy intervention to local kindergartners. Created and directed by Foy, Bookworm provides identified children with one-on-one tutoring, literacy materials and individualized learning experiences. LMU students serve as tutors under the close supervision of Foy and the classroom teachers. They conduct 40 minutes of one-on-one or small-group instruction three times a week for 20 weeks, learning about teaching and literacy, as well as experiencing first-hand issues related to educational inequity.

One tutor said, “It’s amazing how much of a difference one-on-one tutoring can make in a child’s progress with reading. I feel the most significant impact I’ve made is assisting my students in finding the joy in words and reading, and sparking confidence within them when tackling difficult tasks, giving them the extra push they need to succeed.”

In addition, Bookworm provides teachers and parents with assessments and reports; furnishes referrals to speech therapists and psychologists; educates parents in how to support their children’s literacy development; and donates educational supplies and books to schools, parents and children.

The Los Angeles Times Family Fund, a fund of the McCormick Foundation, is committed to improving the community by supporting nonprofit agencies with education and literacy programs that serve disadvantaged children and youth in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. Since 2000, nearly $30 million has been granted through the Family Fund, supporting vital education and literacy programs for youth and families.

Gomez visited LMU,  the largest Catholic university in Los Angeles, to deliver the inaugural Hispanic Ministry and Theology Lecture, which is sponsored by the LMU Latino Theology and Ministry Initiative.

Gomez said it is vital to reconnect to the Hispanic and Catholic roots of the American story. “Our mission today requires a new spiritual and religious understanding of America’s history — and a new understanding of the ways our history intersects with the first evangelization of Mexico and the other lands of the Americas.” He called for a deeper understanding of the Hispanic role in the history of the hemisphere. “There is something powerful in remembering that before this country had a name —long before there was a Washington or a Wall Street — the missionaries were celebrating the Mass here and preaching the Gospel in the Spanish tongue.”

He said that the mission of the Church today must be a new evangelization “in the face of widespread religious indifferentism and elite disdain for religion.”

The archbishop talked about the need to develop a spirit of adventure in the new evangelization. “We need to enter into the missionary heart and soul of the Age of Discovery. We need to recover the sense of awe and possibility that inspired the first evangelization of our continents.”

Gomez likened the Puritan notion of a “shining city upon a hill” to his vision of a revitalized Hispanic evangelization. “I mean to propose a beautiful, Hispanic vision of America as a ‘camino real,’ ” he said, alluding to the time when explorers and missionaries spread the Catholic faith.

The archbishop was introduced by President David W. Burcham, who noted the deep and multifaceted connection between LMU and the archdiocese.

The LMU Latino Theology and Ministry Initiative is a joint project of the Department of Theological Studies and the Center for Religion and Spirituality to assess and respond to the large population of Hispanic Catholics in the United States. Cecilia González-Andrieu, a member of the coordinating committee and assistant professor of theological studies,said the initiative will create opportunities to come together as a community of students, scholars and Church and city leaders to find avenues for future scholarship and the preparation of leaders.

That is one of the conclusions reached in a Loyola Marymount University study by Jennifer Pate, associate professor of economics and chair of the department, and Andrew Healy, associate professor of economics.

Their results suggest that when faced with competing as an individual-whether in the workplace or the political arena-women are less likely to pursue a goal, and men are more likely to take it on. But when teamwork is involved, the gap between the sexes closes. The study was published in the September issue of England-based The Economic Journal.

This phenomenon results in glaring inefficiencies in organizations and politics. Pate and Healy’s research points to an explanation: Many well-qualified women do not pursue leadership positions because of the need to compete as individuals for those jobs. For instance, the economists note that in 2008, just 2.8 percent of firms in the Standard & Poor’s 500 were led by female CEOs.

“It’s a female tendency to not enter a competition, even when you are high quality relative to the task that’s being assigned,” Pate said. “It explains a lot when you think about male dominance in particular areas. … Our studies showed clearly that, whether they were paired with men or women, working in teams closes that gap by two-thirds.”

The study was conducted at LMU during 2007. A group of students was given a series of tasks as individuals and also were randomly assigned to teams. When given the option of entering a tournament-style task on an individual basis, 81 percent of men opted in, while only 28 percent of the women joined. But when a team element was included, 67 percent of the males joined, while 45 percent of the females did so.

The professors’ research also suggests a way to bridge the gap: Design environments that “reduce inequities by focusing on teams,” said Pate. “You might be able to get the highest efficiency out of your top-performing women if you have them working in teams.”

One real-world instance of that concept in action can be found in Germany, where candidates for political office run as a ticket, rather than individually, resulting in a higher percentage of women participating at the highest levels.

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