President Gamble’s Groundbreaking Remarks

Tom Gamble, Ph.D.
Mercyhurst College President

It is only appropriate that we break ground on this center for academic engagement in the midst of our reunion weekend. It is important to us to have our family—the Mercyhurst alumni—here to celebrate this momentous occasion in the history of the college.

As you all know, Mercyhurst College is recognized nationally for offering a high-quality Catholic, liberal arts education. But, what really differentiates us from our peers is that we combine that focus with hands-on, practical application – blending knowledge and action through real-world situations. At Mercyhurst students learn to put theory into practice and the results of practice back into theory.

This engagement with the world was ingrained in our culture from the Sisters of Mercy founder, Sister Catherine McAuley, who refused to be cloistered, choosing instead to walk the streets of Dublin offering education as a way out of the poverty that afflicted many in the area during the mid-19th century.

Today, thanks to the generosity of alumni and friends of the college, we are now able to take the next step toward that vision by breaking ground on a new 31,000-square-foot Center for Academic Engagement. Scheduled to open in fall 2012, this building will be more than a traditional classroom-style building—it will be a place where knowledge and action meet.

The building will house several key academic disciplines, including hospitality, intelligence studies, applied politics and ethics.

With state-of-the-art kitchens and the new event space as their classroom, our hospitality students will gain the experience of industry professionals, making them even more valuable to employers upon graduation. Additionally, a 160-person seat banquet and conference facility, will provide an extra layer of experience students to this point were only able to receive through internships.

Our internationally recognized intelligence studies program will join hospitality as the second anchor tenant. With added technological resources, students will enjoy enhanced educational opportunities in information acquisition, analysis and presentation. The facility will better equip students to offer insight and analysis for clients that include government agencies and Fortune-50 companies.

An arched walkway bridge will span East Old Main Drive connecting this new building with the Hammermill Library physically demonstrating the need for an intimate relationship between Intel and the library. This is also a creative response to the trend away from libraries serving as repositories of information and toward libraries as information hubs and resource centers.

Additional space and enhanced equipment will provide the new Mercyhurst Center for Applied Politics (MCAP) the resources needed for projected future growth. The applied politics program teaches students how to conduct political research by formulating polling questions, determining appropriate sample sizes, doing the polling, analyzing the polling results, and presenting results to local and national media. We’ve already seen great success with MCAP’s first poll in which our students not only accurately predicted the winner of Pennsylvania’s 3rd district congressional election with the lowest margin for error of any of the national polls but also earned a spot in the New York Times’ 538 poll, one of the most elite in the industry.

Last but certainly not least, The Evelyn Lincoln Institute for Ethics and Society will find its home in the new building. The ethics institute helps weave the critical element of ethics into all academic disciplines, asking tough ethical questions of both students and faculty. It is not enough for Mercyhurst students to be excellent scholars and practitioners; they must also be leaders in service who use Mercyhurst’s core set of values to guide their decision making.

We are confident that this new center will provide many of our students with the next level of academic engagement which will lead to better experiences and opportunities while they are on campus and better job offers and graduate school placements when they graduate.

Before we break ground, I want to thank a few folks. First, thanks to the abundant generosity of many here tonight, not only are we breaking ground on this building but I am extremely proud and honored to announce that we are officially closing the first phase of the Capital Campaign— a year and several million dollars ahead of schedule!

We are also pleased to have representatives of our state government with us this evening, including Flo Fabrizio and Pat Harkins and Joe Giles representing County Council. State Senator Jane Earll’s steadfast commitment to this project and to furthering education has played an important role in the ability of Mercyhurst to move forward on this project. Earlier this year, Senator Earll and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell helped us secure $3.5 million in state funds for the new Center. Without this funding, the project would not have come to fruition as quickly as it did. We are also grateful to the Corbett administration for reaffirming the grant so quickly.
I’d like to invite Senator Earll to say a few words. Please join me in welcoming Senator Jane Earll.