New president settling in at Manhattan College

By Tyler Gund

Manhattan College is now led by its first president who is not a member of a Catholic religious order, Brennan O’Donnell.

Mr. O’Donnell replaces Brother Thomas Scanlan, who served as president of the college for 22 years. Brother Scanlan became a fixture of the Riverdale and Kingsbridge communities and worked with many community leaders in efforts to both raise and spend money at the school. During his tenure the school built new dormitories and a large, controversial parking structure, including a recently completed pedestrian bridge over Manhattan College Parkway.

Brother Scanlan is also credited with accomplishments on the academic side of campus life as well. In his time at the school, there has been a 120 percent increase in applications, as well as a 100-point increase in average SAT scores of the school’s incoming freshmen, making the college a more exclusive place to be.

Being a member of the laity doesn’t mean Mr. O’Donnell is looking to greatly shift the direction the school is heading.

“I hope to preserve and forward the [school’s] mission with … a different perspective,” Mr. O’Donnell said in a recent interview.

According to a variety of reports, more than half of the Catholic colleges and universities in the United States are now run by people who are neither nuns, priests nor monks. It’s a shift that Mr. O’Donnell is aware of, but it doesn’t mean the religious character of a school has to change, he said.

He sees his role as “presenting religious identity in a different way.”

Mr. O’Donnell has said he is a follower of Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, who created an educational movement that emphasizes integration of religious and secular studies in the 1600s and was later canonized by the Catholic Church.

“Lassalian wisdom holds that education is a means through which we preserve ourselves,” Mr. O’Donnell said.

The new president also hopes to preserve the financial legacy left by Brother Scanlan, who, Mr. O’Donnell said, left the college “ready” for the financial crisis that it, as well as every other institution in the United States, faces right now.

“The impact hasn’t been felt as much for us as it has for others,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “This is a difficult time, but difficult times are also times of huge opportunity.”

The biggest opportunity stemming from the downturn may be the understanding that “your life is not completely consumed by what you do to earn a paycheck,” he said.

Mr. O’Donnell says he intends to make good on Manhattan College’s commitment to ensure that at least 25 percent of each class at Manhattan is made up of students who are the first generation of their family to go to college.

Having been named president on Feb. 19 of this year, Mr. O’Donnell entered office on July. Since then, he’s been involved in three orientation sessions for incoming freshmen and has been getting to know the campus.

This is part of the August 6, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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