Lorenz helped students search for life’s meaning
When her loved ones and colleagues were asked for a word to describe Sister Ellen Lorenz — as an educator and a woman of God — the words that most came to mind were “gracious” and “humble.”
In five decades as an educator and, notably, as a former president of Mount Mary University, Lorenz affected the lives of generations of students.
A sister at Elm Grove’s School Sisters of Notre Dame, Lorenz died Dec. 22 of COVID-19 and other underlying health issues. She was 85.
“Sister Ellen’s spirit is in the halls of Mount Mary,” said Sister Joan Penzenstadler, Lorenz’s friend and roommate, who is also Mount Mary’s vice president for mission and identity.
Lorenz is the ninth sister to die of COVID-19 at the Elm Grove facility since an outbreak started there around Thanksgiving. In just five days, from Dec. 9 to 14, eight sisters died of the virus. On Dec. 14 alone, the sisters lost four of their own.
Trudy Hamilton, a spokeswoman for the School Sisters of Notre Dame Central Pacific Province, said Wednesday there are no other active cases of COVID-19 at the complex.
Hamilton said that “sisters and staff continue to follow CDC guidelines for masks, social distancing and handwashing.”
The sisters, many in their 80s and 90s, receive in-home care, with some in assisted living and others in a skilled care unit. But because the facility is not licensed as a skilled nursing facility, it will not get the COVID-19 vaccine at the same time nursing homes do.
From developing “Search for Meaning,” a philosophy and theology course that has been taught to every undergraduate for almost five decades, to leading the university for eight years as its sixth president, Lorenz’s work touched every corner of Mount Mary.
Despite all her accomplishments, Lorenz was known for being a humble leader, who wanted her students and everyone around her to achieve their highest potential.
Christine Pharr, Mount Mary’s current president, recalled Lorenz being so humble that when Pharr once asked her for advice on leading the campus, the nun refused. Pharr was doing a great job, she said.
“That’s just who she was through and through,” Pharr said. “She was not one to sing her own praises, even though what she accomplished during her time at Mount Mary was pretty phenomenal.”
Lorenz taught generations of teachers who went on to teach generations of children.
“My greatest joys often came from seeing these students develop their values and skills and go on to inspire countless other young people through their teaching,” Lorenz once said in a university interview.
One of those students is Deb Dosemagen, now the chair of Mount Mary’s education department. Dosemagen remembered Lorenz for her humility, but also for her sharp intellect and passion for finding quick but thoughtful solutions to any problem.
You could ask Lorenz to overhaul teacher evaluations, present to the university’s board of trustees, teach a class online or clean a bathroom, and she would take on the job with pride and interest, her colleagues said.
“I think of her as leading edge,” Dosemagen said. “The minute something would emerge, like Common Core, before any of us had a chance to turn around, Sister Ellen had a plan for how she would integrate Common Core into her classes with her students.”
Lorenz designed the core general education curriculum that is still used by the university. At the center of that
Lorenz curriculum is the “Search for Meaning” course, which Lorenz developed based on the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor.
Shawnee Daniels-Sykes, a theology professor at Mount Mary, has taught the course for 15 years. The class is cotaught annually by a philosopher and a theologian.
“Search for Meaning” asks students to consider some of life’s biggest questions. What does it mean to grapple with God and transcendence, happiness and love? How do we respond to suffering and death? What are the possibilities for human knowledge? What does it mean to be virtuous? How do we combat social injustice?
“For me, as a theologian, it’s really important for this generation of students to have a sense of something that’s beyond them,” Daniels-Skyes said.
Daniels-Sykes has evolved the course over the years. Today, she teaches from “Plantations and Death Camps“by Beverly Eileen Mitchell, instead of Frankl’s text, so her students can consider systemic racism and the experience of America’s slaves and their descendants.
The theologian said Lorenz was a visionary in that she could see the benefits the course has on students’ lives and for designing a course that could be adaptable and relevant across decades. Graduates still come back to tell their professors how the course changed their lives.
But Lorenz also touched the lives of students in ways that transcended classroom lessons.
Following her death, social media and administrators’ inboxes were filled with tributes to Lorenz, big and small. From the way she kept in touch with graduates and tracked their successes, to the fact that even as president, she took time to attend the visitation for the mother of a graduate, graduates remembered her kindnesses.
Lorenz returned to teaching in the English department after her time as university president, teaching and tutoring