Passions of Sister Joan: Family, Faith, and Learning

By Craig DeVrieze '16 MOL

The slightest hint of a smirk crosses a face fit for sharing stories as Joe Lescinski launches a cross-continental, tag-team telling of the Tale of the Missing 1.

"Do you want to tell the story, Annie?" the eldest of three Lescinski siblings asks of middle sister Ann Akins near the end of an online video discussion.

"Oh, gawd!" Ann responds in theatrical protest from her home near Portland, Oregon. Yet, she barely misses a beat before beginning an iconic family story that is less rehearsed than familiar, clearly told often over decades, over meals, over glasses of wine, whenever and wherever large and boisterous gatherings are convened among the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Joseph and Lucy (Pearl to her children) Lescinski.

It is a story that speaks to the voracious love of learning developed early on by Joseph and Pearl's youngest daughter, who was Joe and Ann's sister Joan long before she was St. Ambrose University's Sister Joan.

It also speaks to young Joan Lescinski's drive for achievement. And it speaks, in no small measure, to a loving and playful sense of humor handed down from the family patriarch.

"She was unreal," Ann begins, placing Joan in the fourth grade on the day that infamous 1 went missing. "Every day she would come home with another 100, an A or an A-plus, on a paper or a test. And, of course, she'd walk in the door with an ‘I got it!'

"Anything she could learn, she ate it up ravenously. And then one day she came home in tears."

Long story short: Joan had been given a 99 on a report, and Pearl spent a good long while attempting to discern why her youngest daughter was in such distress, and then a good long while longer trying to de-escalate the drama.

Here, Joe re-enters the discussion from his home in New York.

"The end of the story goes like this," he says, his mischievous smirk widening to mirthful grin. "Dad comes home and he sees the 99 and he looks at Joan and he says, with a perfect poker face, ‘So what happened to the other point?'"

Family is the first of three primary passions that have driven the life and life's work of Sister Joan Lescinski, CSJ, PhD, who will retire in August as president of St. Ambrose.

Her well-earned retirement will end a 14-year tenure under the oaks, as well as a near half-century-long career dedicated to private, Catholic higher education.

At St. Ambrose and across the breadth of her career, Sister Joan's legacy is rooted in the loving home her parents made. Twin pillars of faith and learning are built upon that foundation of family, each having emerged almost organically from life lessons consistently imparted and faithfully modeled by Joseph and Pearl.

An early Sister Joan memory is as a toddler climbing onto the lap of her father as he read the afternoon newspaper. That her father took the time to describe the meaning of the political cartoons on the Albany (New York) Times-Union editorial page to a child just old enough to talk might explain how Joan became an insatiable reader very soon afterward. By age 5, her need to read so fully was developed that instead of a picnic, a trip to the zoo or a swim party with friends, her fifth birthday wish was a visit to the library to attain the library card she was not eligible to receive until that milestone birthday.

Another early memory is of her mother strategically sitting Joe, Ann, and Joan near the large parish organ during High Mass. "Remember, during High Mass, there is a lot of music and she later told us she never had to worry we were bothering anybody just happily singing away next to the organ," Sister Joan remembered.

"It's just a joy in faith," she said of her earliest understanding of religious worship. "For us, going to church was not a burden. It was always a happy experience. For me, faith and family are so absolutely intertwined."

Her father was a seminarian before the confluence of the Great Depression, World War II and meeting Pearl pulled him along another path. Still, the Lescinski family's path never strayed far from the Catholic Church.

"We didn't miss Sunday Mass. Ever," Ann said. "My mother made sure our faith was part of our everyday lives."

That, of course, meant attending Catholic schools, including grade school under the instruction of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. It was there where Joan first envisioned her future at the front of a classroom.

The family's commitment to faith led brother Joe to the seminary, where he was in the same class as Ann's future husband. Yet, Joan had no inkling she would be called to religious life until the precise moment a voice told her this vocation was to be her life's work.

She entered the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph Carondelet in 1965 at the age of 18, graduated magna cum laude from the College of Saint Rose in 1970, and in the fall of that year fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming a high school English teacher at St. Francis de Sale High School in Utica, New York.

Sister Katherine Hanley, aka Sister Kitty, a fellow member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, was an English professor at the College of Saint Rose and someone Sister Joan considers a mentor, as well as a friend, yet today.

During Sister Joan's class presentations, Sister Kitty saw someone suited for a college classroom. "Joan's ability to hold the interest of 30 undergraduates made me realize that she was a natural for college teaching," Sister Kitty explained. "She could relate and engage while sharing her research and conclusions. If you have taught, you will realize that this is an unusual and welcome gift. I suggested to Joan that she might enjoy college teaching."

It was another surprise calling.

"I never would have imagined myself in higher education, had she not raised it," said Sister Joan, whose subsequent completion of master's and doctoral degree programs built upon Sister Kitty's advice. "It's a perfect example of what mentors do for mentees. They open new vistas.

"Now, of course, the mentee has got to walk through. And that was true for me. I've had several marvelous mentors, including Kitty, and they really just said, ‘You ought to think about this or think about that.' Often, I did. And that's why I'm a president today.'"

The 12-page curriculum vitae Sister Joan will carry into retirement reflects countless "vistas" left better for her having "walked through" them. Likewise, it features a litany of professional associations and accomplishments in service to higher learning and in fidelity to the vows she made as a member of the CSJ order.

It includes:

• Nearly two decades teaching English and English literature at her alma mater.
• Two years as an associate dean of academic affairs and a professor of English at Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri.
• Five years as vice president for academic affairs and dean and a professor of English at Fontbonne University in St. Louis.
• Nine years as president and a professor of English at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana.

All led to 14 years of remarkable achievement, strategic progress and life-enriching growth for St. Ambrose University.

At every stop, Sister Joan built upon the lessons modeled by her parents, and upon the pillars of faith and education she steadily stands upon still today.

Sister Sean Peters, CSJ, frequently has borne witness as her friend honored her faith and her vows by bringing to all of her work and relationships the CSJ charism of "uniting neighbor with neighbor and neighbor with God."

"Whether you are the archbishop or the person who vacuums her office, Joan lets you know that you have something vital to contribute to the institution and to life," Sister Sean noted. "She models this in her listening and in her genuine caring. Joan also obviously relies on God. She may not talk about it a lot, but her behaviors demonstrate what she believes."

The Most Rev. Thomas Zinkula, JCL, JD, bishop of the Diocese of Davenport and chair of the St. Ambrose Board of Trustees, also sees faith as foundational to Sister Joan's work as president at SAU.

"Sister Joan has never lost sight of the fact that St. Ambrose University is rooted in faith, in particular the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and Catholic Social Teachings," the bishop noted. "Her passion and skills for building relationships and community have enabled the university to grow on that foundation – in academic excellence, the liberal arts, social justice, and service. I have been impressed by Sister Joan's strong, collaborative leadership, her personal integrity and her boundless energy."

Sister Joan taught English wherever she worked, up to and including at St. Ambrose, often learning as well as educating, thus assuaging that passion for life-long learning handed down by her father.

"All teachers know that when you teach you are also always learning, and I love learning," she said. "I have never taught a class where I haven't learned something from my students."

What's most important, of course, is that her students learn from her.

Meg Lasch Carroll, PhD, is a professor of literature and humanities at the Albany (NY) College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. Her future was influenced in a College of Saint Rose classroom in the mid-1970s.

"From the first class, Sister Joan plunged us into close deconstructive analyses of the novels, challenging us to read differently, more deeply, slowly. She expected deep thinking and insightful discussions in class. She made Henry James fun!" Lasch Carroll remembered. "I took two more classes with her at Saint Rose and found her enthusiasm undiminished, and her challenges and collegiality both instrumental in learning and an example of how to teach."

Bea Jacobson, PhD, a St. Ambrose professor emeritus of English, identified Sister Joan's capacity for clear and engaging teaching during forums to weigh her candidacy for SAU president more than 14 years ago.

"I sat in on her open forum with students. One student asked her to explain the concept of the liberal arts. She began by referencing her experience of sky-diving, and then said that a liberal arts education would enable a person who landed in an unfamiliar setting to figure out how to communicate, how to survive, how to improve and give back to the local community," Jacobson said.

"Over the years, we all have heard many explanations of the liberal arts and its role in the SAU curriculum. Her response was free of jargon, free of intellectualism. It was clear, direct, and thought-provoking."

One of her earliest St. Ambrose students quickly assessed that Sister Joan was both a life-long teacher and a life-long learner.

"I met Sister Joan when I enrolled for her class on Victorian Literature," said Ben Ferrell. "I was surprised when I learned it would be taught by the university president. Once the semester began, I quickly understood that it was necessary for her to have the opportunity to teach that class. Her passion for literature was evident and contagious. To me, she was not a university president masquerading as a professor: she was a lover of Victorian Literature moonlighting as president."

None of this comes as a surprise, of course, to the siblings who saw young Joan's love of learning blossom while reading editorial pages with her father and through weekly mother-led trips to the library.

One last lasting memory from the childhood of Sister Joan Lescinski encapsulates in full the passions of family, faith, and learning.

It involves a conversation at age 7 in which her mother calmed a particular fear about the afterlife. "You can have in Heaven whatever makes you happy, right?" the child asked, and Pearl assured her, "Yes, every person will have in Heaven whatever makes them happy."

Replied the future 13th president of St. Ambrose University: "Well, I want to learn. Forever and ever and ever and ever."