Loyola College has named the Rev. Brian Linnane, a member of its board of trustees and an assistant dean and professor at a Jesuit college in Massachusetts, as its next president.
Linnane, 49, has worked at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., for more than a decade. He was introduced as Loyola's new president at a news conference at the North Baltimore campus yesterday. He will take office next month.
"I've always been very impressed with Loyola, and I think it's a very blessed place," Linnane said. "I'm excited about leading the school."
He succeeds the Rev. Harold E. "Hap" Ridley, who died in January. Linnane becomes only the third Loyola president in the past 40 years.
He said his chief goals will be to improve diversity and make sure the school's Catholic curriculum and mission remain vital in a changing world.
Linnane was born in Boston into an Irish Catholic family that attended church regularly. He said he wanted to be a priest and a teacher since an early age and tried to join the Jesuit order after high school. He was counseled to wait until after he graduated from Boston College in 1977.
He earned a master's degree from Georgetown University in 1981, before starting his formal religious education at the Jesuit School of Theology.
He also earned several master's degrees and a Ph.D. from Yale University before joining in 1994 the faculty at Holy Cross, where he wrote extensively about ethics and morality. He was named assistant dean in 2003.
"They got a winner," said Stephen Ainlay, dean and vice president for academic affairs at Holy Cross.
"He's absolutely a remarkable teacher and scholar who has the kind of skills you need to pull students out of their shell," Ainlay said. "That's what's going to serve him well as a president."
`A serious scholar'
Linnane's extensive education and teaching experience made him appealing to Loyola's presidential search committee.
"He's a serious scholar, and we wanted to have someone who understands what faculty do," said Claire Mathews McGinnis, a theology professor who served on the committee.
"He knows how to help [students] reach their potential," said John Cochran, chairman of Loyola's board of trustees.
Some Jesuit schools, including Georgetown University, have named lay people as their president in recent years, but Loyola's search committee members decided they wanted a religious leader, McGinnis said.
