Santa Clara University selects history-making president

Sullivan set to become the first woman and first layperson to lead the Jesuit institution

Santa Clara University's new president looks nothing like her predecessors.

The Catholic school announced March 1 that, for the first time, a woman and layperson will lead the 171-year-old institution after generations with Jesuit priests at the helm.

Julie Sullivan comes to SCU from the University of St. Thomas, a Catholic school in Minnesota she has presided over for nine years, and will take over roughly a year after the Rev. Kevin O'brien resigned as president after an investigation into inappropriate behavior with graduate students. The search committee, which considered dozens of candidates from across the country, hopes Sullivan's tenure will bring stability, but also growth and innovation.

“You're always building on what came before you,” Sullivan said during a nearly hourlong interview on campus, “and it's very important to gain a deep understanding of what came before you and build on that strong foundation.”

She becomes the school's 30th president, after O'brien's stunning and mysterious departure just months after he presided over Mass for President Joe Biden's inauguration and sought treatment for alcohol and stress management. An investigation concluded he had engaged in behaviors at informal dinners with students on the path to priesthood that involved drinking and mostly conversations that were “inconsistent with established Jesuit protocols and boundaries.” Provost Lisa Kloppenberg was appointed acting president, and the university's board of trustees updated the bylaws to remove a requirement that the president be a Jesuit priest.

Now they've turned to Sullivan, who converted to Catholicism as an adult and has a history of breaking barriers: She also was the first layperson and first woman to lead the University of St. Thomas.

“I think this community has been through a lot of change in leadership and so I want to be an accessible leader,” Sullivan said. “I want them to know there is a leader here who cares for them, who will be working with them.”

Raised in Florida, Sullivan is a first-generation college student who holds a bachelor's degree in accounting, a master's in taxation and a PH.D. in business from the University of Florida. The 64-yearold taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UC San Diego before serving as executive vice president and provost at the University of San Diego. Her husband, Robert “Bob” Sullivan, now retired, was the founding dean of the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego. The pair have a blended family of five children, including two who live in the Bay Area, and eight, soon to be nine, grandchildren.

On Sunday, her 8-yearold grandson, James, visited to deliver his grandmother the new ink pens — in Bronco red — he asked his father to help him purchase with his own money for her new job.

To Larry Sonsini, chair of the board of trustees, choosing not only a layperson but a woman made sense. While he said Sullivan “didn't get points” for ticking those boxes, “I think it's going to be a positive.” He hailed her as open-minded and sensitive but also business-savvy and someone capable of developing deep relationships with community leaders.

When she officially becomes president July 1, Sullivan plans to spend significant time listening to members of the SCU community, and sketching outlines of a vision for the future, which she wants to firm up with input from staff, faculty, students and others.

In the wake of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, turmoil in the world and on campus, she said, “we have to rebuild the fabric of our community. We have to rebuild the bonds.”

The Rev. Matt Carnes, chair of the search committee and a Jesuit priest, said he was thrilled to welcome Sullivan to campus.

“She's a really great team builder,” Carnes said.

Moving forward, Sullivan is interested in developing new academic programs that respond to the changing needs of society and perhaps phasing out others.

Part of the appeal of Silicon Valley, she said, is that the region draws bright minds from all over the

world.

She'd like to explore boosting the number of students modestly — undergraduate enrollment sits around 5,700 — and expand opportunities for low-income, first-generation college students to attend SCU, by creating new scholarships and expanding pipelines from schools like Cristo Rey San Jose Jesuit High School, which serves low-income families.

“I think universities increasingly are going to be held accountable for how they are enhancing social mobility in our world,” Sullivan said, “and they should be held accountable for that.”

Sullivan views herself, at heart, as an educator, but one with good business acumen. She values the Catholic commitment to educate the whole person — mind, body, spirit and heart — and the Jesuit tradition of “prayerful introspection.”

In response to people nervous about a lay person heading the school, Sullivan said, “I would tell them that's OK, and let's get through that together.”

As a layperson, “you have to be very intentional” about nourishing the religious heart of a university, she said. “You can't just wear it on the collar. You have to be talking about it all the time, in action to it.”

In the coming months, Sullivan will wrap up at St. Thomas and head west. She and the university are still working out exactly where Sullivan and her husband, who also maintain a home in La Jolla, will live. Her only two stipulations, she said, are that it include space for her array of exercise equipment and two dogs — a tiny rescue mix named Oliver and a labradoodle named Bella. She'll make some time to sit by the ocean to decompress, enjoy the occasional glass of pinot noir. And she'll make a few visits to campus to get to know her future colleagues.

“A leader can't do anything without a community,” Sullivan said.