Fizzy Business - Regis College

Kathleen Dooher
A New Era for
England
After a
transformational
decade at Regis,
the president
moves on
BY RACHEL MORTON
She’s worked closely with governors and presidents and
counseled churchmen at various levels as they worked for
social justice. She and Rosalynn Carter have lobbied Congress
together on issues of mental illness. Cardinal Bernard Law
relied upon her advice and judgment as the Boston archdiocese
entered what has been its most controversial era
in history.
But for Mary Jane England, the job with the most dramatic
and long-lasting results has perhaps been that of president
of Regis College. She will be leaving that post in June after a
decade of service that has been nothing short of transformational
for the college.
“It’s time,” she says. “I’m ready. Ten years is a good stint.”
It has certainly been a good stint for Regis. On the verge of
bankruptcy when England arrived in 2001, the school is now
stronger in every way, with a larger student body, new graduate
programs in health sciences, sparkling new athletic fields,
and, the biggest change of all, a coed campus.
In fact, Dr. England has filled these 10 years with more
significant activity than most colleges experience in a century.
Perhaps it is because she has not been a traditional college
president. She traveled a very different route, one that made
her exactly the right leader for Regis in its most critical hour.
How did a child and adolescent psychiatrist become
uniquely qualified to, as the Boston Globe put it at the time,
conduct a “rescue mission” for a struggling Catholic college?
Well, it has a lot to do with the political acumen and management
skills she gained through her many years reforming
health care policy at the state and national levels.
But it has just as much to do with her deep understanding
of the mission and gestalt of Regis. She knew the Sisters of
St. Joseph and their values. They educated her and were the
guiding force in Brighton, the part of Boston she grew up in
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FALL 10