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Our History
What we do at SJU is educate men and consequently, much of what has been done over the years in single sex residences, a men’s senate, the athletic program, etc., is men’s education. The challenge is to try to articulate what we do and why it is so successful. If we know that, we can become even better at doing it. Here is a brief history.
You will see the beginnings of men’s studies in work done by Dr. Ozzie Mayers, Professor of English, under the FIPSE grant (1983-87) and efforts by Dr. Charles Thornbury, Professor of English, to broaden the Women’s Studies minor (1994). Discussions during faculty forums on whether to have a single academic provost and on our coordinate mission statements other issues surfaced: “Why don’t we articulate men's issues as clearly as we do women’s?” asked Dr. Thornbury and others, a question on which Dr. Mayers et al. had worked since mid-eighties.
When Gar Kellom, VP of Student Development, came to SJU in 1992, he began discussing the importance of articulating what it meant to be one of the four all male institutions of higher education in the country. The first effort made to answer that question was to simply start a reading group. The group met for a year or two and worked through books such as American Manhood by Anthony Rotundo, The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Meade, and Men and the Water of Life by Michael Meade. The group met until 1995 or 96 and then was dissolved into these other efforts that started up from that beginning.
In 1993-94 Kathy Allen, VP of Student Development at CSB, and Gar began a Portfolio Project to track 40 men and 40 women as they progressed through CSB and SJU. That data was collected for four years and there is a final report out on the findings by the social work faculty who analyzed it. It shows very interesting progress in the education of men.
In 1994-95, at their winter retreat, the Board of Trustees/Regents of the two schools had as their topic the gender focus at CSB and SJU and we invited Michael Kimmel to speak on men’s colleges and Sharon Parks to speak on women’s colleges. The Boards loved the retreat and said it was the best they had ever had. The following year, Charles spoke to them about men’s issues as well.
In 1995-96 Gar asked a group of monks to meet to try to determine what they thought was a men’s spirituality. That group met for two years and made a presentation each year. First they presented as the final event of the first Men’s Series and secondly, they presented at the 1997 summer NOMAS conference at SJU. The work is being published in the Journal of Men’s Studies and in 1997 three more groups of students and monks have been started to discuss men’s spiritual development.
The Men’s Lives Series was conceived in 1994-95 and started in 1995-96 with nine events and the title “Celebrating Men.” In 1996-97 we changed the title to “Telling Men’s Stories,” thanks to the monk’s presentation and the work of Michael Meade, well-known for his work with men. By 1997-98 academic year, the series had been featured in at least five national news stories and was praised as innovative by the American Men’s Studies Association.
A men and leadership working group originated as part of the Kellogg grant on leadership and that is where the focus group research came from on the various constituencies on men.
The statement “Educating Men” was first drafted by Charles Thornbury in 1996-97, and he met with a committee to revise it. It underwent a number of revisions, and was most recently revised in the summer of 1998.
We began a men’s sophomore retreat program out of Campus Ministry in 1996-97 as well, and held the second retreat under the guidance of Michael Meade in the fall of 1997. A dinner was held for Board members and others interested in the future of men’s studies with Michael Meade as a consultant that week also.
In 1996, Professor Janet Hope, Associate Professor of Sociology, conducted a survey for us on the effectiveness of the Men’s Series and the need for men’s studies classes. She has presented her findings in the Men’s Series at the SJU Cabinet and at the NOMAS Conference. In addition to Ozzie’s courses and Charles’ courses, Jan Santich, OSB, taught a course in J-Term each year that was well attended and Ralph Holcomb, Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Work, also taught courses. Manju Parikh, Associate Professor of Political Science, is very interested in this curricular material as is Janet Hope.
In July of 1997, the 22nd Men and Masculinity National Conference of NOMAS, directed by Charles Thornbury, was held at SJU. There were nearly 100 participants with a very rich program of presentations. Dr. Thornbury served on the National Council of National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) from 1996 to 1998 and on the National Council for the American Men’s Studies Association (AMSA) from 1998 to 2000. He also helped direct AMSA’s National Conference in 1999.
Many other things go on and have grown out of our work locally. For example, the Outdoor Leadership Center is a result of realizing that men like to do outdoor things. By the year 2000 there were over a dozen Men’s Spirituality Groups involving over 100 students and 15 monastic members involved in these spirituality groups.
The 1998 Men’s Lives Series was probably marked with the feel of increasing diversity with both Minoru Kiyota and Bernard Franklin doing presentations on martial arts and men and fathers in the hood. Dr. Chip Capraro also focused on what is men’s studies and why study men anyway? This also led to some great discussions about men’s studies in the curriculum.
In April 1998 the first national men’s advisory board meeting was held with Michael Kimmel, Bernard Franklin, Ozzie Mayers, Charles Thornbury, Mark Thamert, academic administrators and Gar Kellom participating. Michael Kimmel was able to meet with other groups on campus, ie the Student Senate, and Bernard Franklin met with other groups to multiply the effect of these important figures in men’s studies.
In 1999 the focus was on men’s health with Tony Lanzillo, founding director of the Center for Men’s Health in Camden, NJ, speaking on breaking down men’s health, the machine mentality. Michael Kimmel returned to campus talking about men’s bodies and masculinity. Philip Dacy also spoke that year. In this year as well, the Men’s Lives Series Committee began to broaden its scope and became the Men’s Studies Project Committee.
With the fortunate hiring of Dr Michael Ewing in our Counseling Center, a new energy was given to the issue of men’s health. The work of Will Courtenay began to interest the student body and the men’s health initiative was developed. This movement coming out of the counseling center at SJU involved many students including Matt Byrne who eventually published a paper and did work on men’s health as part of his nursing major. He gave a presentation also for the SJU President’s Cabinet on men’s health that prompted Br. Dietrich to suggest that we host a national men’s health conference. That is still a proposal and we are working with a Board member to see if that might become a reality. The Physical Education Department proposed that there be a new lifestyle fitness class for both men and women. Therefore, the possibility arose to address men’s health issue through a required class in the curriculum. That class was piloted in the fall of 2000 and is being revised based on student input.
With the colleges receiving a grant from the Bush Foundation to create learning communities, a health and wellness floor was created at SJU and mushroomed into first, second and third year and next year fourth year groups of students living together pursuing healthy lifestyles. The Bush Grant also fostered a gender learning community which has attempted to pull together faculty involved in the gender and women’s studies minor with people on both CSB and SJU campuses working on men’s and women’s issues. Funding through this Bush learning community has also helped to support the Men’s and Women’s Lives Series.
The student senates, partly because of the keen interest in men’s health and probably because of their request to support the Men’s Series, became actively involved in men’s issues and sent some students to the American Men’s Studies Conference in Nashville. The students made quite an impact and argued that there should be more students involved in AMSA the following year in Buffalo. Students, including Matt Byrne and St John’s Senators gave presentations with Gar Kellom on the St John’s experience. Gar wrote a paper titled, “Recruitment, Retention and Education of Men at Saint John’s,” which was published as part of the proceedings of the Oxford Roundtable on Residential Colleges and it was also presented at the American Men’s Studies Association Convention.
In 2001, Matt Steele and Bryan Bohlman did a presentation at the AMSA conference on articulating the men’s experience at SJU. Gar presented a second paper he wrote on “Serving Men Effectively in Residential Colleges.” This was also part of the Oxford Roundtable on Residential Colleges deliberations in the summers of 2000 and 2001 and will be published with their proceedings.
In the fall of 2000 SJU was invited to participate in the first ever meeting of men’s colleges at the Morehouse Research Institute in Atlanta. This meeting was inspired by President Walter Massey of Morehouse who brought together various constituents to look at the decreasing percentage of men graduating from all colleges and universities in the country. The sweeping nature of this enrollment issue for men has been causing concern in higher education and Morehouse wants to lead the way in researching and addressing this issue. After an initial meeting, Gar Kellom was invited to present his two Oxford papers and to articulate why SJU has been so successful in this difficult environment for recruiting and retaining men. As a result of that conference, another conference is planned for April 2002 to articulate a research agenda on this issue. Once again SJU was asked to play a leadership role in organizing the presentations for that conference. Students doing research on this issue are to be involved in this upcoming conference including students from all four men’s colleges. SJU is organizing that effort.
Also in 2000, serious deliberations began about forming a men’s center at SJU and appointing a coordinator and visiting professor for the men’s series and the men’s project. These proposals were presented to the SJU President’s Office and Institutional Advancement as possible future fundraising priorities.
Will Courtenay kicked off the 2000 year of the Men’s Series with a very comprehensive visit on men’s health that evolved into a longer-term research project to collect data on men’s health at SJU and to determine ways to use that data to change the normative behavior of men. SJU hired a health educator, Lori Klapperich, to direct that project, write grants, and do other work on educating men. Also in the Men’s Series, Terry Kupers presented on men and feminism and specifically talked about men in prison. He also spent some time working with the St John’s prison ministry group. In March 2001, Sam Femiano, clinical psychologist in private practice in Massachusetts, talked about men and spirituality from his experience in a monastic community and spoke in the monastery as well as to our students.
Co-curriculum review was also initiated this year and the question of the role of gender education in core courses is now a matter of official discussion. With encouragement from the Parent Committee, planning has begun to develop a father/son event to complement the mother/son dance and father/daughter event. There has also been a men’s enrollment task force meeting over the past several years to particularly address the issues of men’s enrollment at SJU. It obviously has been a very successful activity as the current enrollment situation at SJU has never looked so good and admissions is now closing applications in the winter and creating a long waiting list of students, many of whom do not get in. SJU has capped its enrollment, as has CSB, and has continued to raise the ACT and SAT profile for students, making it a more selective institution.