[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 102 (Wednesday, June 21, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8817-S8818]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           A LEADER MOVES ON

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Sister Janice Ryan recently announced that 
she will be giving up the presidency of Trinity College in Burlington 
next July after 17 years of service. I note this news with sadness, 
thanks and with hope.
  I am sad because the kind of leadership Sister Janice embodies is 
found in so few people on this Earth. She has committed her life to 
improving the lot of others. She has been a tireless advocate for the 
disadvantaged. She has been an inspiring leader in the field of higher 
education in Vermont. She has been a stirring role model for the 
thousands of students at Trinity College, most of them young women, who 
have seen the power and force of a gifted educator and administrator.
  Sister Janice has done all this with competence, a sense of humor and 
the grace that comes from a confidence grounded in logic, reason and 
faith.
  When Sister Janice Ryan speaks, people listen. She does her homework. 
She is political in the best sense of the word. She understands the 
complexity of the decision making process, and knows how to work to 
change the system in ways that will further the interests of those in 
whose name she speaks.
  Sister Janice is not retiring She is moving on to another chapter in 
her life, which I know will be as challenging and rewarding and 
fulfilling as the chapter that will soon close.
  We need more people like Sister Janice Ryan everywhere. But we in 
Vermont are especially proud to have been graced by the presence of an 
exceptional native daughter of our Green Mountain State.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to include a recent article 
and editorial about my good friend Sister Janice Ryan that appeared in 
the Burlington Free Press. My wife Marcelle, and I wish her Godspeed.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S 8818]]

          [From the Burlington (VT) Free Press, May 16, 1995]

                   Ryan To Retire From Trinity's Helm

                            (By Molly Walsh)

       After 17 years at the helm of Vermont's only women's 
     college, Trinity College President Janice Ryan has announced 
     she will leave the school in July 1996.
       ``For Trinity and for me it just feels like the right 
     time,'' Ryan, a Roman Catholic nun, said Monday. ``We have 
     truly as a college been blessed.''
       Friends, trustees and nuns in The Sisters of Mercy, the 
     order that founded Trinity and welcomed Ryan as a fresh-faced 
     farm girl in 1954, praised her vision, determination and 
     energy.
       ``We would have liked to convince her to stay here for 
     another 17 years,'' said Christopher Weinheimer, Trinity 
     board of trustees chairman and treasurer of Fletcher Allen 
     Health Care. A national search for a successor is underway.
       During Ryan's tenure, Trinity launched a successful 
     ``weekend college'' degree program, three new masters 
     programs and two major capital campaigns. It also established 
     a model scholarship program to help low-income single parents 
     receive an education.
       It's the students, most of all, who make Ryan proud as she 
     looks back.
       ``I've watched the young women over these 17 years and 
     honest to goodness, their abilities never cease to amaze 
     me,'' Ryan said.
       Off campus, Ryan has served on dozens of boards and 
     community service projects, taking a special interest in 
     mentally retarded people of all ages and children with 
     special needs.
       Ryan is the kind of person who would always find a way to 
     get un-stranded from the proverbial desert island, said 
     Trinity trustee Joan Sylvester, who has known Ryan for 20-odd 
     years.
       No problem is too big for her.
       ``She's like the little Duracell battery that goes on and 
     on,'' Sylvester said.
       Ryan's resignation is not a surprise. Two years ago, she 
     declined to sign a fourth five-year contract. Trustees 
     persuaded her to stay at least through July 1996 to help 
     oversee a $5 million capital campaign.
       To date, $4.4 million has been raised and a $1.9 million 
     reconstruction of Delehanty Hall, the college's primary 
     teaching facility, begins today.
       One of six children in an Irish-Catholic family, Ryan's 
     early education in a one-room school house was followed by a 
     bachelor's from Trinity and a masters at Boston University in 
     1967.
       Ryan's polished, dressed-for-success image is a contrast to 
     the nun who wore thick glasses with clunky, black frames and 
     the traditional long, black habit in the 1960s while she 
     taught at local parochial schools.
       And far from the stereotype of a cloistered nun, Ryan is 
     known as an engaging dinner partner and a skilled fund-raiser 
     and networker.
       Ryan sets a fine example of spirituality in action, said 
     Sister Lindora Cabral, Trinity trustee and president of the 
     Sisters of Mercy, Vermont Regional Community. ``To have 
     people realize that we're part of today's world * * * that's 
     a very important piece for us.''
       Although she will always love Vermont, Ryan is interested 
     in policy-making work on an international level. ``She will 
     be missed,'' Cabral said. ``But whether she's in the area or 
     not, Trinity will always be a piece of her heart.''
          [From the Burlington (VT) Free Press, May 18, 1995]

                          Mission Still Undone

       If Sister Janice Ryan doesn't eventually end up in a front-
     line public service job serving Vermont's disadvantaged, her 
     resignation next year after 17 years as president of Trinity 
     College in Burlington won't just be a loss to the school. It 
     will be a missed opportunity for Vermont.
       The time couldn't be better for an administrator of her 
     caliber and an advocate for the needy with her energy to take 
     a full turn in government service.
       Examine the list of citizens likely to suffer the most from 
     federal budget-cutbacks and cost-shifts to states, and it 
     reads like a Who's Who of people Sister Janice has helped 
     before and during her time at Vermont's last remaining 
     women's-only college. Among them: the under-educated and 
     physically and mentally disadvantaged in particular; women in 
     general.
       Public-service opportunities ahead become even more obvious 
     when you look at the enormous task Vermont state government 
     now faces: implementing welfare reform (whose largest group 
     is now poor, single women) while absorbing federal budget 
     cuts; making affordable the same special education law Sister 
     Janice helped pass in 1972, without undermining its equal-
     access intent; and, most important, defending the basic tenet 
     of modern government now at risk of being forgotten--
     retaining a basic level of decency for the disadvantaged, not 
     as a luxury but as a moral and social imperative.
       In short, Sister Janice's quiet, behind-the-scenes work at 
     both state and national levels on behalf of all such causes 
     isn't just a legacy for Trinity, it's a job description for 
     Vermont state government.
       As for other women aspiring to leadership--whether within 
     or outside religious life--there are other secrets to be 
     found in Sister Janice's example and long tenure.
       One: It isn't the loudest voice that wins; more often it's 
     the most persuasive and persistent. Just ask any Vermont 
     legislator who remembers the years of struggle by her and 
     other women to gain equal access to public schools for 
     Vermont's retarded and other mentally disadvantaged children. 
     Or any Vermont bishop who's found her on his doorstep ready 
     to discuss in private her views on controversial church 
     matters.
       It's also testimony to what can happen when the boss--in 
     this case the Sisters of Mercy--says, both by design and 
     action, that a religious woman's role is, in fact, ``out 
     there,'' where the under-educated and the underprivileged 
     live.
       Nor is this more public life without the usual pitfalls. 
     Sister Janice's predecessor at Trinity, Sister Elizabeth 
     Candon, found the transition from religious life and academia 
     a rocky one during her own pioneering tenure as human 
     services secretary in the contentious `70s. Yet in that 
     example is another lesson for any political leader today: 
     that it takes more than good intentions to balance the 
     fiercely competing interests of taxpayers and the needy; it 
     also takes an unusually effective mix of political acuity and 
     toughness.
       While on one hand, education has long been one of the few 
     traditional ways American culture has accepted female 
     leaders, it's taken women like Sister Janice to take such 
     leadership to a new, higher level through innovation and 
     determination.
       If the next few years produce the kind of budget restraints 
     Congress is calling for--Vermont and small states like it are 
     going to need all the persistent innovators like her they can 
     get.
     

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