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Patricia Weitzel-O’Neill didn’t exactly leave childhood with a glow of fondness for her Catholic high school experience.
“I would get into trouble and had to work hard for good deportment grades, and I often disagreed with the sisters,” she laughs, “and I was certain at age 18 that I’d never allow my kids to go to a Catholic school.”
Yet here she is, a former superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, former vice president of academic affairs for Trinity University, and now the executive director for Boston College’s Barbara and Patrick Roche Center for Catholic Education — one of the nation’s preeminent resources in training, preparation and problem-solving for Catholic educators on all levels.
And for the record, both of Weitzel-O’Neill’s children are graduates of Catholic grade school and high schools.
So what happened to all that youthful angst about Catholic education?
“Looking back, I began to appreciate the discipline and rigor that underpinned my Catholic schooling,” says Weitzel-O’Neill, who grew up in Detroit and Pittsburgh. “There was a real openness in the faculty to promote critical thinking, to push you to question what you read and what you heard.
“Of course, my memory was of arguing with the sisters because they took to heart that task of pushing us to help us think on our own,” she adds. “Well, weren’t they clever?”
A year after her appointment to the Roche Center — she formally began her duties in July — Weitzel-O’Neill is happy to have found many new allies for the battle she wages now: to help Catholic education address a myriad of financial and social challenges. She lauds the personalities and programs at BC with whom she collaborates on numerous center-related initiatives, including the Urban Catholic Teachers Corps, the St. Columbkille Partnership School in Brighton, the Institute for Administrators of Catholic Higher Education, the journal Catholic Education, and new programming to support pre-K through grade 12 Catholic schools.
Boston College, she says, has been all she hoped for, and more.
“There is such a commitment to the Jesuit-Ignatian culture of education here. You see it in practice, in management styles, in the respect for other’s opinions and comments, day in and day out — it’s not just basic pedagogy. People have chosen to be here because of this culture, and that dedication is reflected across the University.”
Weitzel-O’Neill brings to the center both a broad overview and a day-in, week-out perspective of Catholic education, from eight years heading the Archdiocese of Washington Catholic schools as well her years at Trinity, where in addition to vice president of academic affairs, she was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and associate professor of sociology. This combination of vantage points has given her a sharp insight into the distinctiveness of Catholic education.
“One of the most basic Ignatian tenets addresses the question of ‘Why did God make me?’ — ‘To do those things in the world God asks you to do so you can find the truth and be with God.’ Catholic schools help children achieve that goal. Any Catholic school you visit, the administration and faculty are committed to this mission — theirs is not a job, it’s a vocation.
“There is a great deal of autonomy within Catholic schools: fewer forms to fill out, less bureaucracy, and a strong local authority of teachers and principals. This is a great advantage in meeting students’ needs.”
While Catholic schools’ financial struggles are well-known, says Weitzel-O’Neill, professional development is an equally vital concern. “In the past, the religious orders running the schools became professional learning communities, where they could share experiences and pass along the wisdom that comes with practice.”
“But as education became compartmentalized, and as the laity have moved in to replace the religious in Catholic education, it’s been difficult to replace that sense of community. You need training and mentoring for leadership, so you have people who can help shape the vision for 21st century Catholic education.”
Accordingly, Weitzel-O’Neill and her colleagues are developing plans and strategies that will support the center’s mission of providing Catholic educators with opportunities for professional advancement, applied research, support programs and outreach. The center’s current agenda includes a two-day conference for teams of pastors and Catholic school principals from the Archdiocese of Boston and other Massachusetts and New England dioceses, workshops for elementary and secondary principals, and in July, the annual four-day Institute for Administrators in Catholic Higher Education.
Also, the center will collaborate with graduate students in the Lynch School of Education and continue the work of the Legacy project.
“This project, begun by [former Lynch School dean] Joseph O’Keefe, SJ, has collected data on Catholic schools since 1995 and now provides us with a means to look at Catholic schools in a very detailed and meaningful way: What ones have stayed open, and why, and what are the characteristics for success?”
Weitzel-O’Neill points to the third Catholic Higher Education Collaborative Conference, held on campus last fall, as another source of support for Catholic education. That event focused on what institutions of Catholic Higher Education could do to support academic excellence. The 2009 conference, held at Loyola University of Chicago, launched an initiative to compile standards for effectiveness in Catholic schools that Catholic educators may be able to employ in quantitative and qualitative assessments.
“This project looks at, for example, what are Catholic identity and academic excellence in an effective Catholic school? How can a school be operationally vital and stable? That’s the piece about which Catholic educators have historically lacked training.”
Through these and other activities, Weitzel-O’Neill also hopes the center can help foster greater support from the American Catholic community for Catholic education.
“My belief is that the Catholic community needs to wrap its arms around Catholic education,” she says, “and recognize what it’s contributed to the leadership and common good of the United States. It’s not just the colleges and universities that have done this, but the elementary and secondary schools, too — Catholic education makes a difference from the very beginning of a child’s school life.”