St. Joseph's University gets first lay president, Mark Reed

When Mark C. Reed graduated from St. Joseph's Prep in 1992, he knew he wanted to attend a Jesuit college - and he was accepted to all four to which he applied, including St. Joseph's University.

But in the end, the Philadelphia-area native chose Fairfield, in Connecticut.

"I just wanted to go away," he said.

Now he's coming home.

Reed was named president of St. Joseph's on Wednesday, the first lay leader in the school's 164 years.

And at 40, the mathematician is the university's youngest president - at least since 1927, when St. Joseph's moved to City Avenue.

Reed, senior vice president for administration and chief of staff at Fairfield, will take over July 1 at the 8,860-student St. Joseph's, in Philadelphia and Lower Merion.

"Philadelphia is the city I call home," he said. "This is an opportunity to go back home."

Reed is used to being the youngest school official in the room. He became Fairfield's dean of students at 26.

He had started his career as a Catholic high school teacher and didn't see himself in academia until Fairfield offered him an opportunity to serve as assistant to the dean of the business school while earning his M.B.A.

His selection as president culminates a nearly yearlong search that began after the Rev. C. Kevin Gillespie announced he would depart after three years. In the last year, the university has faced faculty unrest over financial and management concerns, including votes of no confidence on several senior staff members, all of whom are scheduled to be gone by June.

Reed isn't worried about the strife.

"There wasn't anything that I saw or I heard that said to me, this place is not necessarily going to be receptive to new leadership or not committed to its future," he said.

Reed will have plenty of room to build his own team. St. Joseph's is looking for a provost, an enrollment head, and a chief financial officer, among other posts.

He also said he will seek to give St. Joseph's a stronger presence in city life.

"One of my most important responsibilities as president of St. Joseph's is to wave the flag of the university and to make sure that St. Joseph's is recognized and putting forth its best foot," Reed said.

With the number of eligible candidates in the priesthood waning, St. Joseph's for the first time conducted an "open" search rather than "Jesuit preferred." Its lay choice follows a trend at the 28 Jesuit colleges around the country, which had only one lay president a decade ago, John J. DeGioia at Georgetown University. This summer, there will be 11.

Reed is Catholic, and Edward W. Moneypenny, chair of the board of trustees, cited the new president's "unshakable commitment to advancing Catholic and Ignatian values," referring to St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus.

At Fairfield, Reed is senior adviser to the president and is involved in planning, operations, athletics, auxiliary and campus services, conference and event management, facilities management, human resources, legal affairs, public safety, and trustee affairs.

"He did everything," said Robert J. Bowman, search committee chair, "virtually everything except being provost."

Reed's father, Charles, a retired pediatrician, is a St. Joseph's graduate, Class of 1962. His parents live in the Huntingdon Valley house where he grew up.

He is married and has two daughters, Maggie, 6, and Laney, 4. After earning his bachelor's degree in mathematics and his master's in secondary educational administration from Boston College, he got his M.B.A. from Fairfield and his doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania.

At Fairfield, Reed teaches calculus. Last month, he received Fairfield's distinguished faculty/administrator award. He's interested in teaching at St. Joseph's, but not right away.