Mark L. Poorman is an American theologian, ethicist, and academic administrator who formerly served as the twentieth president of the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon, United States. Poorman was inaugurated as president of the University of Portland on September 26, 2014. [1]
Poorman spent his childhood in Phoenix, Arizona, Bakersfield, California, and Springfield, Illinois, where his father served as the founding president of Lincoln Land Community College. [2] He earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Illinois and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. [2] He later earned a master of divinity degree from the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana and a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
Poorman was received into the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1977, made First Vows in 1978, professed Final Vows in 1981, and was ordained as a Holy Cross Priest in 1982. [2]
After completing his master of divinity, Poorman remained on Notre Dame's campus to serve as rector of Dillon Hall, associate director of campus ministry, and instructor of theology. [2] He returned to Notre Dame after earning his Ph.D. to become a member of the theology faculty and later an administrator. From 1999 to 2010, he served as Notre Dame's Vice President for Student Affairs and as priest-in-residence in Keough Hall on the campus. [1]
Poorman was named Executive Vice President of the University of Portland in 2011, overseeing university operations, financial affairs, student affairs, and university relations. [2] He also joined the university's theology faculty and helped to create the university's Dundon-Berchtold Institute for Moral Formation & Applied Ethics. [2]
At its January, 2014 meeting, the University of Portland's Board of Regents elected Poorman the institution's twentieth president, succeeding Rev. E. William Beauchamp, C.S.C., who had served as president since 2003. [2] Poorman was inaugurated on Friday, September 26, 2014 at a ceremony held at the Chiles Center on the University campus. [3]
In 2015, Poorman announced that the University of Portland would create a new strategic plan to guide the institution's mission fulfillment over the course of the next four years. [4] The plan, entitled Vision 2020, was launched in 2016 and provides strategies by which the University would fulfill its mission of teaching and learning, faith and formation, and service and leadership. [4]
Poorman teaches an undergraduate theology course on moral formation and ethics entitled "The Character Project." [5]
The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, north of the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campus covers 1,261 acres in a suburban setting and contains landmarks such as the Golden Dome, the Word of Life mural, Notre Dame Stadium, and the Basilica. Originally for men, the university did not formally accept undergraduate female students until 1972.
The University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) is a national Roman Catholic private university with campuses in Fremantle and Broome in Western Australia and Sydney in New South Wales. The university also has eight clinical schools as part of its school of medicine located across Sydney and Melbourne and also in regional New South Wales and Victoria.
Rev. Theodore Martin Hesburgh, CSC was an American Catholic priest and academic who was a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross. He is best known for his service as the president of the University of Notre Dame for thirty-five years (1952–1987). In addition to his career as an educator and author, Hesburgh was a public servant and social activist involved in numerous American civic and governmental initiatives, commissions, international humanitarian projects, and papal assignments. Hesburgh received numerous honors and awards for his service, most notably the United States's Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964) and Congressional Gold Medal (2000). As of 2013, he also held the world's record for the individual with most honorary degrees with more than 150.
The Congregation of Holy Cross, abbreviated CSC, is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of pontifical rite for men founded in 1837 by Basil Moreau, in Le Mans, France.
John Francis O'Hara was an American member of the Congregation of Holy Cross and prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as president of the University of Notre Dame (1934–1939) and as the Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1951 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958.
John Ignatius Jenkins, C.S.C. is a Catholic priest of the Congregation of the Holy Cross and the current president of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. He previously served as its vice-president and associate provost. He replaced Edward Malloy as president.
Rev. E.William Beauchamp, CSC, J.D., was named the University of Portland's 19th president by the Board of Regents on November 20, 2003. He served in that capacity until 2012, at which time he began service for the provincial administration of the Congregation of Holy Cross.
Rev. Edward Aloysius Malloy, C.S.C., is an American Catholic priest, academic, and former college basketball player who is a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Nicknamed “Monk Malloy”, he is best known for his service as the 16th president of the University of Notre Dame from 1987 to 2005.
Rev. Brian F. Linnane, S.J. is the former president of Loyola University Maryland. Before assuming the presidency, he served as an assistant dean and associate professor at College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit institution in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Paul Edward Waldschmidt CSC was an American prelate of the Catholic Church who served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon from 1978 to 1990.
Basil Moreau, C.S.C. was the French priest who founded the Congregation of Holy Cross from which two additional congregations were founded, namely the Marianites of Holy Cross and the Sisters of the Holy Cross. Father Moreau was beatified on September 15, 2007 in Le Mans, France.
Margaret A. Farley is an American religious sister and a member of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy. She was Gilbert L. Stark Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale University Divinity School, where she taught Christian ethics from 1971 to 2007. Farley is the first woman appointed to serve full-time on the Yale School board, along with Henri Nouwen as its first Catholic faculty members. She is a past president of Catholic Theological Society of America.
Old College, built in 1843 by the founder of the University of Notre Dame, Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., and the rest of the Holy Cross brothers, is the oldest standing building on campus. Together with other historic structures of the university, it is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Jean-Louis Bruguès, OP is a French archbishop of the Catholic Church. He was the Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church from 2012 to 2018.
Rev. Thomas J. O'Hara, C.S.C., Ph.D. is provincial of the U.S. Province of Priests and Brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross.
George Joseph Finnigan, C.S.C. was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Helena in Montana from 1927 to 1932
John S. Dunne, C.S.C. was an American priest and theologian of the Congregation of Holy Cross. He held the John A. O'Brien Professorship of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.
Mark D. Jordan is a scholar of Christian theology, European philosophy, and gender studies. He is currently the Richard Reinhard Niebuhr Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of the Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
The coat of arms of the University of Notre Dame is the assumed heraldic achievement of the University of Notre Dame. It was designed by noted American heraldist Pierre de Chaignon la Rose in 1931.
Patrick Michael Neary, C.S.C. is an American priest of the Catholic Church who serves as Bishop of Saint Cloud in Minnesota. He has worked as a missionary priest in Chile, Kenya and Uganda, held leadership positions in the Congregation of Holy Cross, and filled pastoral assignments in the U.S.