June 17, 2020
Born to be president
By Vicki-Ann Downing
Rev. Robert A. Morris, O.P. ’46 & ’82Hon., longtime administrator and professor, was famous for saying that God brings people to Providence College when it’s their time.
One might say that Rev. Brian James Shanley, O.P. ’80 — the most transformative and longest-serving president in College history, who changed the physical face of campus, hired most of the faculty, diversified the student body, strengthened the Catholic and Dominican mission, enhanced the athletics program, and raised the College’s national profile — was born to be PC’s president.
“Brian being president of Providence College was something that I think was meant to be,” said his sister, Kathryn M. Shanley. “Thinking of my parents and the role the Dominican fathers played in their lives, his 15-year term is the culmination of something that started a long time ago.”
Father Shanley is PC’s first legacy president. His father, Joseph V. Shanley ’49, grew up in New Haven, Conn., the son of Irish immigrants. After serving as an aviator in the Army Air Force during World War II, he returned home to attend college under the GI Bill. His family’s parish, St. Mary’s in New Haven, was staffed by Dominican priests from the Province of St. Joseph. They encouraged Mr. Shanley to choose Providence College, a quick train ride from home.
Father Shanley’s mother, Elaine McNerny Shanley, was influenced by Dominicans as well. She received her undergraduate degree from Albertus Magnus College in East Hartford, which was founded and staffed by the Dominican Sisters of Saint Mary of the Springs.
The couple married in 1949 and settled in Warwick, R.I., three years later. Their first three children — Kathryn, Andrew, and Michael — arrived within 2 years. When they were 8, 7, and 6, Mrs. Shanley gave birth to fraternal twin boys, Brian and Paul. They weighed a combined 15 pounds. Father Shanley was younger by six minutes.
“I always think of the two of them together,” Kathryn said. “Their relationship was such a special relationship. It must be so unique to be a twin and to have that kind of bond. They were each other’s best friend. Two pieces of a puzzle coming together — that was Brian and Paul. They cared so much for each other. They were in it together.”
Paul became a police lieutenant in Warwick and deputy chief of police at Brown University. At Father Shanley’s inauguration as president, Paul remembered his brother as his guardian and protector — outgoing, confident, athletic, and an excellent student.
The Shanley household thrummed with activity. Mrs. Shanley’s mother lived with the family. Life centered around their parish, St. Gregory the Great. Mr. Shanley taught his children to play golf. They all loved to read. They cheered for Friar basketball on the radio and at the Providence Civic Center when it opened in 1972.
“I remember a lot of activity all the time,” Kathryn said. “My parents’ legacy to us was that they loved us. They were very much role models for us throughout their lives — their values, moral code, ethics, humanity, and caring for other people.”
Mr. Shanley, who was a writer and editor for The Cowl, worked as a reporter for The Providence Journal and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. In 1959, he received a New England journalism award for his story about a Black family that was paid $500 not to move into a white neighborhood in North Attleborough, Mass. Later, Mr. Shanley worked for Bo Bernstein & Co., an advertising agency in Providence, then partnered with David A. Duffy ’61 & ’11Hon. to found Duffy & Shanley, a public relations and advertising agency based in the city.
Once Brian and Paul were in school, Mrs. Shanley earned a master of library science degree from the University of Rhode Island. She worked as head cataloger in Phillips Memorial Library from 1968 until her retirement in 1993. She held the rank of associate professor — and the distinction of being the first woman awarded tenure by the College, in 1975.
Her employment at PC opened an opportunity for Father Shanley when he graduated from Toll Gate High School, where he had been a “small but tough running back” on the football team, according to The Providence Journal, and also played baseball. Father Shanley wanted to study law at Harvard. His parents told him if he would agree to attend PC tuition-free courtesy of his mother’s employment, they would pay for law school.
Dr. Richard J. Grace ’62 & ’17Hon., now professor emeritus of history, was the director of the Liberal Arts Honors Program when Father Shanley applied to PC. He reviewed Father Shanley’s application and invited him to join the honors group. Among the 20 honors students in the Class of 1980, it soon became apparent that Father Shanley was a natural leader, Grace said.
Jane Lunin Perel ’15Hon., now professor emerita of English, remembers being impressed by the young Father Shanley when she encountered him as a first-year student in an honors class, Dimensions of Art.
“He understood metaphor deeply, internally, no explanation required,” Perel said. “It was just in him.”
At PC, Father Shanley became more interested in his faith and Catholicism. He began attending Mass every day. Rev. Thomas M. Coskren, O.P. ’55, professor of theology and associate director of the honors program, asked if he had ever considered becoming a Dominican priest. Father Shanley began to think about it.
“I came to PC wanting to go to law school,” Father Shanley said. “Then I thought that being a professor has got to be the coolest job in the world, so I wanted to be a history professor. If you’re a Dominican, you get to be a professor and also a preacher. And the Dominicans at Providence College preached like nobody I had ever heard before.”
Then came his junior year abroad at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. It was his first experience living outside his home state. He had a room in an apartment with an elderly couple who spoke no English. He fell in love with a fellow Fribourg student, a young Swiss woman who taught him to speak fluent French and visited him after his return to Providence. (They remain friends. She is a grandmother now and still visits him).
“What ensued was truly a magical year of grace,” Father Shanley wrote in a reflection on his Fribourg experience. “I traveled all over Europe by hitchhiking and trains to see the things that we had studied in DWC. … I learned how small and American my view of the world was. I discovered that my faith was transportable and transnational. In short, I grew up.”
Grace remembers Father Shanley visiting Pietrasanta in Tuscany, where PC students were studying in a summer arts program with Rev. Richard A. McAlister, O.P. ’58, professor emeritus of art. One afternoon the students and teachers went out on a lake in rowboats. As an exultant Father Shanley rowed across the water, his full, reddish blond beard glistened in the sun. It seemed this young man’s future was filled with boundless possibilities.
But when he returned to PC for his senior year, Father Shanley wrestled with a decision. Should he apply for a Fulbright to return to Europe? Should he apply to graduate school to become a professor? Or should he become a priest?
“Senior year I was really confused about what to do with my life,” Father Shanley said. “I agonized for months. By mid-year, through a series of signs and prayers, and thinking things through, I really knew God was calling me to be a Dominican.”
It surprised some of his professors, but not his family, who sensed destiny unfolding.
“When he chose to become a Dominican and pursue an academic career, my parents fully believed that someday he would become president of Providence College,” Kathryn Shanley said. “We all had that sense from the beginning, though they didn’t live to see it.”
Father Shanley graduated summa cum laude with a degree in history, second in the class, with a 3.989 GPA. (Mary Ann Rousseau ’80, who went on to Cornell Law School, was first at 3.993.). He entered St. Stephen Priory in Dover, Mass., for his novitiate year with classmates Rev. Christopher Cardone, O.P. ’80 & ’00Hon. and Rev. Peter John Cameron, O.P. ’80. When his first year was complete, he went on to the Dominican House of Studies, the province’s seminary in Washington, D.C. He was ordained to the priesthood on May 22, 1987.
His first three-year assignment as a Dominican brought him back to the College. He became the residence hall director at Stephen Hall, living with students in what is now the Feinstein Academic Center and teaching courses in philosophy and the Development of Western Civilization.
In 1991, Father Shanley was sent to the University of Toronto to complete a Ph.D. in philosophy. Three years later he became an assistant professor at The Catholic University of America. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2001. He relished academic life, which included a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Notre Dame and a semester as a visiting professor at Emory University. His academic specialties were St. Thomas Aquinas, the philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy, and ethics.
“Catholic University challenged me intellectually because it was a research university,” Father Shanley said. “I had to do a lot of research and be published. It was a great experience for me.”
But he was never far removed from Providence.
In 1999, at age 41, Father Shanley was appointed to the PC Board of Trustees. Another new member that year was Michael A. Ruane ’71 & ’13Hon. Arthur F. Ryan ’63 & ’90Hon. was re-elected to the board. Ruane and Ryan both became major donors to the College during Father Shanley’s presidency, making possible the Ruane Center for the Humanities, the Ruane Friar Development Center, and the Arthur F. and Patricia Ryan Center for Business Studies.
Father Shanley didn’t expect to be named president in 2005. The other finalist, Rev. Kurt J. Pritzl, O.P., dean of Catholic University’s School of Philosophy, was Father Shanley’s boss and friend. When Father Shanley and Father Pritzl came to Providence to attend trustee meetings, they always visited Rev. Kenneth R. Sicard, O.P. ’78 & ’82G, who lived in Cunningham Hall and was director of residence life.
“I thought they would pick Father Pritzl, and maybe when he was done, it would be my turn, when I was in my mid-50s and after I had accomplished everything I wanted academically. I was thinking about a book I wanted to write,” Father Shanley said. “It turned out they picked me. I was 46 years old. I didn’t expect it.”
It had been three decades since the College had been led by a president so young. (Very Rev. Thomas R. Peterson, O.P. ’51 was 46 in 1975.) Father Shanley’s immediate predecessor, Rev. Philip A. Smith, O.P. ’63, was stepping down at age 71 after an 11-year term.
Much was made of the new president’s relative youth and boundless energy. He practiced the martial arts, played golf, and enjoyed opera, reading, and the Red Sox. He faced immediate challenges: growing the College’s endowment, revising its core curriculum, increasing diversity in the student population, and strengthening the Catholic and Dominican mission.
Father Shanley’s first act was to appoint Father Sicard as his executive vice president and treasurer. On July 1, Father Sicard will succeed him as president.
“He is incredibly organized and efficient in ways I am not. We’re like the odd couple,” Father Shanley said. “Providence College would not have had any of the successes it has had if I did not have a great #2. I don’t know anybody who works harder than him. I have complete trust in him. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.”
Father Shanley knew a lot about the College as a trustee, but he had never run anything before. He attended the six-day Seminar for New Presidents offered by the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
“I learned a lot of things that were valuable to me almost immediately and things that over time I came to understand were important,” he said.
“When I got this job, I really didn’t know a lot about what I was doing, but I had a real confidence I could learn anything I needed to know,” he said. “I wasn’t afraid to ask for advice. Part of being a good president is leadership. I talked with successful people about what I needed to be successful as a CEO.”
Father Shanley’s leadership style is based on personal relationships, according to Greg Waldron, senior vice president for institutional advancement. Dr. Vance G. Morgan, professor of philosophy and former director of the Development of Western Civilization Program, said Father Shanley is “very good at empowering other people to do what they’re best at. He is not a micromanager.”
“I let people do their jobs,” Father Shanley said. “People thrive when you trust them. I manage by managing individuals. I don’t think about team building.”
The chairs of the Board of Trustees during his presidency — Ruane, John F. Killian ’77, and Christopher K. Reilly ’84 — became key advisers. So did the presidents of colleges in the BIG EAST Conference and those he met through the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Rhode Island.
Because while many people can offer opinions, there are decisions only a college president can make, Father Shanley said.
“You have to understand how to make the big decisions,” Father Shanley said. “Then you have to develop a thick skin and have confidence in your decision.”
Asking donors to give to the College is a key part of a president’s job. During Father Shanley’s presidency the College endowment doubled, thanks in part to the Our Moment campaign that raised $187 million between 2010-2017. Among other advantages, the larger endowment allows the College to meet nearly 90% of a student’s financial need with grants and scholarships.
“Fundraising is just relationship building,” Father Shanley said. “I like people. I’m asking philanthropic people to donate to Providence College. The key is to match their passions with the College’s needs.”
In building relationships and raising money, it helped that Father Shanley enjoyed golf. A perk of being president is being invited to play on some of the country’s most beautiful courses.
Trustee Colleen M. Duffy ’83 tells a story about golfing with Father Shanley when his drive went deep into the woods. He faced a nearly impossible shot through trees and also needed to clear a bunker and get past a false front to the green. Undaunted, he took a utility club from his bag and punched the ball out of the trees and past the bunker, where it landed softly on the green.
“That’s when I knew there was a greater power backing his golf game,” Duffy laughed.
Father Shanley is an engaging public speaker, whether presenting a homily at Mass or reassuring parents leaving their children for the first time that PC will love them the way God loves them. His speeches, which usually reference a book he has just read, seem to be made up on the spot.
“People think I don’t prepare,” he said. “I do prepare. I just don’t read from a script. I’m a bullet-point thinker. I write notes to myself and decide what points I want to make, A, B, C, and D. I can remember A, B, C, and D. I sometimes have the points in front of me, but I don’t look.
“I’ve never written out a homily,” he added. “A homily is a conversation. I’m talking to parents, I’m talking to students.”
Father Shanley taught a course in the honors program almost every year of his presidency. He worked out alongside students, faculty, and staff in the Concannon Fitness Center. He was a familiar sight striding briskly through campus, his frame bent slightly forward into the wind.
He has given his all to Providence College.
“It is part of his being to want this college to succeed,” Perel said.
The year 2019 was not kind to Father Shanley. He was hobbled by hip surgery. He lost his brother Paul to an aggressive and rare form of bone cancer. And though he would have welcomed another five-year term as president, it was not to be.
“I hope he finally gets time to himself,” said Phionna-Cayola Claude ’18 & ’21G, who got to know Father Shanley during her senior year as president of Student Congress. “I always felt he was doing everything for everybody and not thinking about himself. I always wanted to give him a big hug. I hope he gets a chance to breathe. He gave it his all. It’s hard not to wish the best for him. He has a good heart.”
Being president of Providence College was a dream job, Father Shanley said. He is uncertain what the future will hold, but does not rule out a return one day, if it is God’s providence.
“I know God will open a door for me, but I don’t know what it will be yet,” Father Shanley said. “What I feel most of all now is gratitude.”
