RADNOR — Dr. Marie Angelella George was inaugurated Saturday as the seventh president of Cabrini College in a ceremony attended by a host of educators and dignitaries, including Cardinal Justin Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, and U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, D-7, of Edgmont.
In her inaugural address, George revealed a new four-year curriculum that is currently being piloted with 100 students at the 51-year-old college.
“I am pleased to announce today bold steps that Cabrini College will take as we begin our 51st year,” George said. “Our rich heritage and keen sense of mission have prepared us well to act compassionately and decisively in the area of curriculum reform where matters of justice will be central because justice matters.”
The new college president said that beginning next fall, all entering students will be “immersed” in a unique social justice educational experience called Justice Matters.
“Over the next four years, we will implement the Justice Matters curriculum for all students,” she said. “Teams of students and faculty in each academic discipline will research the root causes of injustice and long-term solutions to global issues, working with partners in the United States, Africa, Asia and Latin America. They will bring resources to bear on the pressing issues of our time.”
George said those resources include health, ecology, food supply, migration, women’s rights and globalization.
“These are but a few of the issues that will be imbedded into the curriculum here for every student in every major,” she said.
George noted that in February, as a demonstration of her own commitment to the new program, she will accompany a team of students and faculty to a Mayan village in Guatemala.
“There, our students will investigate the power of partnership to help communities achieve their basic human rights. In Guatemala, we will learn from Catholic Relief Services and the missionary sisters how Catholic social teaching is being put into practice in the most challenging of situations,” George said.
The daughter of immigrant Italians, George grew up in Wilkes-Barre. Her mother was a seamstress and her father, a shoemaker. She recalled her father’s words to her that “echo in my brain and in my heart every day.”
“Marie, … there is one thing that no one can ever take from you and that is your education,” she said, quoting her late father.
Dr. George earned a doctorate in organizational leadership at the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree in counseling at the University of Scranton and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at College Misericordia in Dallas, Pa. She and her husband, Francis, have a son, Francis Jr., and daughter-in-law Selena, who live in New Hampshire.
Before coming to Cabrini, George was executive vice president an St. Anselem College in New Hampshire.
The cardinal offered benediction at the end of the ceremony and also read a papal blessing for George from Pope Benedict XVI.
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