Meet Our New Sponsor Council Members!

Last summer, AM-SSND created a Sponsor Council to better nurture, support, and sustain the mission of our sponsored and cosponsored ministries. Sponsor Council Chair, Sister Delia Dowling, SSND, shares some thoughts about her new position.

When I was invited to chair the newly created Sponsor Council, I readily said “YES.” 

I thought that the vision and practical creation of the Sponsor Council would be a means to use my experience, expertise, and spirit in a new way that would be helpful to the province and supportive of our sponsored ministries.

As a teacher and educational administrator over the past 50+ years, my spiritual growth has been interwoven with my apostolic life. 

As a teacher working in several schools and universities, I experienced diversity in the students and communities I served and came to understand my important role in recognizing and developing the potential of the students I taught.  

As an administrator, I valued the responsibility and opportunities to create community, strive for excellence, be creative, create networks of support, and make decisions on every level, directly affecting the lives of those we served.

So far, the work of the Sponsor Council has been satisfying as the Council moves forward systematically creating relationships, defining procedures, and making decisions that will affect the sustainability of our sponsored ministries into the future. 

Together, we are beginning a new chapter in the inspiring stories of our sponsored ministries.

When I accepted a position at an SSND sponsored educational institution, the mission of education for transformation of people resonated with my personal desires and goals. It did not take me long to realize that this was not solely the mission of this institution but of the School Sisters of Notre Dame. This definition of education shaped the rest of my career and personal life.

As an elementary school teacher, education was focused on imparting knowledge to students in a structured environment. Ensuring that sight words, reading comprehension and math and science concepts were learned was the main goal.

I loved teaching second and fourth grades because the open minds, the wonder and excitement, the humorous interactions made me smile!

I moved into college administration and education became broader. Academics were complemented with programs and services that supported students holistically.

Creating environments to support academic success and the growth of students as individuals seeking to develop their potential, learning to live their lives with purpose, finding causes or interests that they could commit to as ways to impact the world while finding personal satisfaction was exciting and stimulated my learning.

Serving individuals who live on the peripheries by listening, loving them and facilitating a process that allows their inner power to be realized is transformational for all of us mentoring staff, by providing experiences where skills are refined, new skills developed, exchange of thoughts and ideas are encouraged and debated creates an environment where each person is the educator.

By Sister Carole Shinnick, SSND, Council Contact for Caroline House

I am a product of 12 years of education by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, as was my mother before me. Some of my teachers had been my mother’s teachers, which had its own challenges. My music teacher never tested me for voice and said I was an alto because my mother had been. Years later I found out I was a soprano after trying to sing low for much of my non-illustrious music career.

After my first profession and with very little education in pedagogy, I was sent out to teach the seventh grade – all subjects included.
I had a wonderful, patient teaching partner who mentored me in everything from SRA Reading Programs to tracking weekly milk money payments. I will be forever grateful for her mentoring.

After eleven years of teaching, and at a time when we were being encouraged to expand our experience of ministry, I left formal teaching and took a position as a caseworker at Catholic Charities in Newark. My supervisor there was a seasoned social worker whose career was spent at Catholic Charities. I was doing case studies for couples hoping to adopt what were unfortunately called “hard-to-place children.” Marcie, my supervisor, was wonderful - incredibly supportive and affirming. In fact, I soon realized that no principal had ever affirmed my efforts in twelve years as Marcie had in my first months as a case worker.

I never returned to teaching. I went to St. Louis University to earn a master’s degree in social work. I have ministered in a wide series of wonderful settings where my experience as an educator enriched my practice of social work. In retrospect, I see that no matter my job title, I have been an educator in all I did.

Key among my mentors for whom I am eternally grateful was my first and only seventh-grade teaching partner, Sister Joselle, and Marcie Meehan, my supervisor at Catholic Charities. They both taught me the value of patience, seeing potential in someone even when she does not see it in herself, and of the preciousness of expressed appreciation.

A former secondary school teacher and clinical social worker, Sister Carole served as a Provincial Councilor for 8 years in Wilton, CT.

After serving in initial formation, she was appointed Executive Director of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious (LCWR) and served for 6 years. Since 2008, she has been a consultant and facilitator, specializing in meetings, chapters of election and affairs, and team-building for leaders of religious communities of women.