St. Ambrose welcomes a new Q-C teacher
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By the Times staff | Friday, October 05, 2007 |
Sister Joan Lescinski believes she would have been happy as a high school English teacher in Utica, N.Y., where she began her academic career in the 1970s. But an experienced colleague saw something that encouraged her to suggest Lescinski consider college teaching. She took a job at the College of St. Rose, Albany, N.Y. During her 12 years in Albany, another mentor encouraged her to consider academic leadership. Lescinski took the plunge and won an associate dean’s position at Avila University in Kansas City.
At each step in her career, a mentor helped Lescinski think bigger.
With each step, Lescinski reacted similarly to her first transition from high school teacher to college professor: “I felt as though I’d died and gone to heaven.”
Today, Sister Joan is in Iowa — famously not heaven — making another transition as president of St. Ambrose University. Already, she is leaving big impressions in our community. She’s kept a frantic pace meeting with college groups as well as organizations throughout the Quad-Cities.
At her Women’s Connection speech in August, Lescinski confessed to having “imposter’s syndrome,” the personal suspicion that her leadership opportunities were somehow a fluke. Interviews with her former students and colleagues quickly dispel those concerns. In fact, those at St. Mary-of-the-Woods, in Terre Haute, Ind., where Lescinski served as president, describe a leader who brought out the best in the them with patient coaching, cajoling and sometimes, an outright challenge.
“One never knows the full effect a good teacher has on a
student,” Sister Joan said in an interview on the St. Ambrose Web site. “I’ve been approached by former students who tell me that something I said in class changed their life. And I can barely remember the context.”
Her response to the student? “It wasn’t what I said so much as you were clearly ready to hear it.”
Sometimes it seems as if elements of our Quad-Cities have “imposter’s syndrome,” that nagging doubt about the potential and possibilities for growth.
Yet St. Ambrose’s purposeful growth in central Davenport is creating possibilities neither the college nor community dreamed of. We welcome Sister Joan Lescinski to the Quad-Cities with open ears and minds and can’t wait to see the changes inspired by the leadership of a woman who, no matter what her position, still values the title, “teacher.”
<b>Inauguration day</b>
Sister Joan Lescinski is formally installed as St. Ambrose University president 2 p.m. today at Galvin Fine Arts Center with a reception at 3:30 p.m. in the Rogalski Center.
The 2 p.m. ceremony is by invitation only. Watch the ceremony via the web at sau.edu.
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