Colleges and
Universities Rebounds of all sorts renew Jesuit St. Louis U.
By PAMELA
SCHAEFFER NCR Staff St. Louis
When Jesuit Fr. Lawrence Biondi became president of St. Louis
University 10 years ago, he found it hard to distinguish the campus from its
inauspicious surroundings.
Like several other Jesuit urban universities, it was situated in a
deteriorating part of the city. The campus offered little protection against
encroaching urban blight and street crime. An architectural mishmash, the
campus "lacked boundaries," Biondi said.
So, it seems, do his dreams and drive.
The priest, widely admired here of late for his accomplishments,
is known privately around campus as "the Italian stallion," tip-off to his
hard-charging ways. He is credited with turning a depressing collection of
aging buildings into a remarkable oasis -- and doing much to revitalize midtown
St. Louis in the bargain. "We have become an anchor to the city," he says
without apology.
And, he vows, there is more to come from this sometimes
controversial president who has been described publicly in the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch as "aggressive and visionary" and privately as "brash," "sincere
but naive," and "a street fighter."
Born to Italian immigrants from Lucca, Italy, in the Tuscany
region, Biondi blends Italian sensuality with a free-and-easy demeanor and a
disarmingly direct conversational style. Those qualities make him approachable
and engaging, but also mask what, by his own admission, is a resolute drive to
raise the national reputation of the university -- a drive that has led him not
only to improve the campus, push the St. Louis Billikens basketball team into
the NCAA, upgrade faculty salaries and add academic programs, but also to fire
a succession of administrators, including nine vice presidents in 10 years.
"They weren't capable," he says flatly when asked about the
turnover.
"When I first got to St. Louis, I saw a number of needs as I
walked around," he said. For one thing, he noticed that "the campus didn't have
any distinctive markings for the general public, let alone the student."
He didn't hesitate for long. He began a program of buying,
building, razing and renovating, to the tune of $330 million (from donations
and bonds) so far. He has added 39 acres and 30 buildings and defined campus
perimeters and entrances with wrought iron fencing and archways supported by
brick posts. Parking lots and streets that once cut through the campus have
been turned into broad pedestrian promenades, anchored at their axis by a tall
new clock tower. Tiles decorated with the university logo, a stylized
fleur-de-lis, trim brick entrance posts and architectural features across the
campus blend old and new.
Anchor restored
Historic old buildings have been beautifully restored, most
notably St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, spiritual anchor of the campus, and
DuBourg Hall, home of university administration. Both are a century old.
Wherever he could, Biondi has gobbled up surrounding property and
replaced asphalt with expanses of lawn sporting fountains, sculptures and
lavish plantings (19,060 flowers in 1996, boasts a university brochure). He
even got the city to apply the school's color, bright blue, to fire hydrants,
traffic light standards and a nearby off-campus overpass.
The overpass runs along two of the five city blocks that separate
the medical school campus from the university's main campus -- blocks to the
south that Biondi has designs on acquiring to eventually link the two
campuses.
Biondi acknowledges that he was able to get off to a running start
in 1987 thanks to his predecessor, Jesuit Fr. Thomas Fitzgerald, whose major
task was to recoup from some financial problems in the early 1980s. Biondi
inherited a school operating in the black, and five years later announced a
$200 million fund-raising campaign, due to end in December. One controversial
major donor is John Connelly, casino owner, who gave $1.5 million for a project
and serves on the university board.
Biondi also inherited some turf battles -- intolerable "fiefdoms,"
he says, among the university's various programs and schools. Sources say that
tug-of-war was a factor in some of the administrative changes. Recent efforts
to bolster unity resulted in a plan to build a $12 million home on the
university's main campus for Parks College of Engineering and Aviation. The
school was formerly (and happily, according to students and faculty who balked
at the move) situated on the other side of the Mississippi River, in Cahokia,
Ill.
Also in the works is a new $15 million building for the School of
Allied Health Professions, a $6.5 million expansion and renovation of the law
school, construction of a "student village" of garden-style apartments, and a
14.5-acre public park on newly acquired ground. It will include tennis courts,
a softball field, a putting green, a lighted walking path, a picnic area and,
as beneficiaries of Biondi's Tuscan tastes have come to expect, water -- in the
form of a 1.7-acre lagoon.
A few years ago, part of a former Jesuit seminary was turned into
a museum to showcase contemporary religious art. Other galleries have been
added. Recently Biondi renovated an existing 81,000-square-foot recreational
center, a complex that already was ranked by the National Intramural Sports
Association as among the top 20 such facilities.
Just north of the campus, an entertainment district has
independently developed apace, giving home to the St. Louis Symphony hall and
several live performance centers. Grand but dilapidated old theaters have been
carefully restored, turning a once-dying area back into a regional magnet.
Aspiring to be first
Academically, Biondi aspires to make St. Louis University first
among Catholic schools, a goal that a skeptical administrator on campus labeled
"a pipe dream." (According to the most recent rankings by U.S. News and World
Report, a handy, if often challenged measure, St. Louis University falls into
the second tier of national universities, whereas Notre Dame, Georgetown and
Boston College rank in the first 50. Notre Dame just kicked off a fund-raising
campaign for $776 million, nearly four times the campaign ending in St. Louis
and coming just six years after a $465 campaign ended in 1991).
"There's no need to continue the building of the last 10 years,"
Biondi told NCR. "We would like now to focus on academic
excellence."
It is no surprise that his efforts have sparked criticism.
For example, when plans to renovate the 100-year-old university
church were announced, some alumni organized to head it off. Among the concerns
was that the church would lose its traditional features. But when the updating
was unveiled in 1991, a tasteful blending of new with old, all but the most
diehard critics fell away.
With his goal of higher visibility in mind, Biondi announced (to
snickers) soon after he arrived in 1987 that he wanted the university's
basketball Billikens to rank among the nation's top 50 collegiate teams.
In 1992, he showed their coach the door, hired a replacement,
Charlie Spoonhour, and arranged for home games to be moved to a much larger
auditorium downtown. In 1994, the Billikens played in the National Collegiate
Athletic Association Tournament for the first time in 37 years. They did it
again in 1995, and last year played in the National Invitation Tournament.
Naturally, fans have increased. Last season, attendance for home games ranked
18th among 93 schools in the NCAA's Division I.
As for academics, Biondi says he has been upgrading faculty
salaries, programs and technology right along, although some faculty still carp
that he is more concerned with cosmetics. However, even some of those concede
that the improvements have boosted morale.
New programs have been added and a few faculty have been lured
away from prestigious institutions. The average salary for full professors has
grown in 10 years to $72,700 from $45,100. Endowed professorships have
increased fivefold, to 24 from 5. Eighteen journals are published at the
school, up from 10. Biondi has plans to spend $4 million on technology.
The university's endowment (at $550 million in December, up from
$206 million in 1991) is 55th largest among U.S. schools. Further, the
university is one of only three Catholic universities to be designated a
Carnegie Foundation Research Institution II, based on doctoral degrees granted
and federal funds funneled into research. Biondi isn't satisfied. He says he
aspires to the highest designation, Carnegie Foundation Research Institution
I.
Worldwide niche
Among immediate goals, he said, is to upgrade laboratories and
computers needed for scientific research. He also wants to develop a program of
ethics across the curriculum, continuing yet another campaign of his: to
strengthen the school's Jesuit character. Such a program would give the
university "a real niche in higher education worldwide," he said.
"Every university president wants one thing for graduates --
competence in their discipline," Biondi said. "After that, you can draw a line
in the sand. We can be different because of our Catholic, Jesuit identity. We
want our students to have a set of Jesuit, Christian values," including a
commitment to service, he said. (See related story, page 36).
Biondi's "build-it-and-they-will come" philosophy is paying off in
number and quality of students. This year, St. Louis University enrolled its
largest freshman class in nine years: 1,128 students. The average ACT scores of
incoming freshmen is 25.7 on a 36-point scale, marking an upward trend but
lagging well behind Notre Dame's average of 30.
One area where criticism of Biondi has been slow to die is his
taste in statuary. His penchant for fountains and sculptures has prompted both
good-natured jokes and critical derision. For example, "The Bather," a nude
nymph reclining amid falling water has been nicknamed "the Floozie in the
Jacuzzi." The fountain is part of a plaza where a bank building once stood.
Robert Duffy, cultural news editor for the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, gave the university high marks for its "enveloping warmth and
graciousness" and for a "stunning" refurbished three-story Pere Marquette
Gallery in the 100-year-old administration building, but dismissed the
Biondi-led sculpture campaign as "sincere ... relatively innocent and naive,"
in some cases "embarrassing" and even "good for a laugh."
Biondi's defenders say he chooses the sculptures (including some
of males, who, as Duffy points out, have lost their loincloths) with an eye to
engaging the students, not the art world.
Another complaint: Some students and faculty wish Biondi would
spend less time away from campus fundraising and serving on boards. He serves
on the boards of the city's major cultural and civic committees. The student
newspaper has christened him "Father Beyondme." He simply tells them all of his
efforts are in the university's best interests and ultimately in theirs.
When criticized, Biondi can be alternately insouciant, petulant or
scrappy, depending on the issue and the source. He admits to colorful language,
recently telling a Post-Dispatch reporter, "I'm a linguist, you know. I think
damn and hell are wonderful words."
In general, an early chorus of naysayers and tail-draggers has
grown quieter these days. As one faculty member said, "He's made some mistakes"
in terms of his public image, "but he always lands on his feet."
He is particularly sensitive about the number of female professors
and administrators, saying he wants more.
"I have a deliberate policy of trying to get more females into
administrative positions," he said. He is pleased that five of 12 deans are
women and that at one point in his tenure as president four of 10 vice
presidents were women. (The current number is two.) Full-time female faculty
are 31.2 percent of the overall total; 42 percent of the total hired in 1995;
and 31.2 of the total hired in 1996.
Biondi said officials from other urban Jesuit institutions have
trekked to St. Louis in recent years with an eye to campus improvements at
home. Among schools represented: Marquette University in Milwaukee, Seattle
University, Rockhurst College in Kansas City and Loyola University in Chicago,
where, before St. Louis, Biondi spent 20 years as professor and dean. He earned
a degree in classical languages at Loyola in 1962, the first in a Jesuit string
of degrees, including a PhD in sociolinguistics, licentiates in philosophy and
theology and a master's of divinity.
Meanwhile Biondi has been courted for top spots at his Chicago
alma mater and at Boston College. He says he declined invitations to apply. He
professes to love it here and to have no plans to move on. In the past two
years, a press that tended to dismiss the school (favoring the more prestigious
Washington University) has returned his affection with glowing reports.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorialized last year about the building
boom and proclaimed, "St. Louis University deserves public appreciation and the
continued cooperation of city and civic leaders."
Earlier this year, amid civic hand-wringing over the city's image,
lack of direction and racial divisions, Biondi wrote an op-ed piece for the
newspaper, promoting the region's strengths and urging commitment to addressing
its problems. "I believe in St. Louis," he wrote and asked, "Why do we embrace
the bad news at the exclusion of the good?"
Jesuit Fr. Charles Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit
Colleges and Universities, said Biondi is "highly esteemed" among Jesuit
administrators. "Certainly [the university] has made a lot of progress in being
both a university committed to its urban setting and at the same time attaining
national stature. That's a difficult thing to achieve and they've had great
success in doing that."
National Catholic Reporter, September 26,
1997
|