After spending his entire life on Long Island, Brother Timothy Driscoll, S.M., likes to joke that this is his first time “living on the mainland.”
And not just anywhere, but on another island of sorts. He lives in the heart of the student neighborhood, where he shares a house with other Marianists amidst a sea of University of Dayton students. He enjoys cooking for his brothers and their guests and striking up conversations with students over shared meals.
“The neighborhood, to me, is the embodiment of community,” Bro. Tim told me about his early reflections of UD life. Having once ferried 103 high school students to World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he has seen firsthand how faith takes root when young people are invited to be part of a community. At UD, he sees that possibility unfolding every day.
Bro. Tim officially took on his new role as rector and vice president for mission at UD this month after working closely with Father Jim Fitz, S.M., since August on the transition of responsibilities.
Some might point to his eight years of service as a UD trustee coupled with his leadership of the Meribah province as provincial as preparation, but I believe he’s been called to this moment since high school when he decided to live his life as a Marianist brother and devote himself to educating youth. During his career, he taught art, English, and religion at the high school and elementary school levels and helped stem an enrollment crisis at St. Martin de Porres Marianist School, which largely educates Haitian and Hispanic children.
While he’s never worked on a university campus, the Marianist mission, for him, remains constant. “One of the things that’s surprising is how familiar it has felt to be here,” he said. “I’ve been so well received.”
Perhaps that’s because we see him everywhere. He’s immersed himself in campus life — move-in weekend, Student Government Association gatherings, athletic events, Christmas on Campus and, sadly, memorial prayer services for students.
In between, Bro. Tim and Crystal Sullivan, assistant vice president for mission and director of Campus Ministry, have convened 40 conversations with faculty to explore how the Marianist charism influences their teaching and scholarship, how the University might better help them incorporate the mission into their work, and which aspects of the mission they find most helpful or challenging.
“We want to be more deliberate in hiring for mission and formation for mission,” he said. “We can come through all the difficult changes on campus by supporting each other and helping each other understand how better to articulate the mission, see our place in it and put it into action.”
I was especially moved by a reflection and prayer he offered at an Academic Senate meeting before Thanksgiving. In the wake of budget and program cuts as UD intentionally shrinks its first-year classes, Bro. Tim surprised faculty by talking about gratitude for grief.
“Grief is the price we pay for loving,” he said, quoting Father James Keenan, a Jesuit moral theologian. “Grief reveals the breadth and depths of human capacity for relationship. …And so the grief we feel for many things is a sign of our love.”
As the oldest of seven children in a deeply religious family, he felt called to be both a Marianist brother and an artist. Art, like faith, reveals deeper truths about what we value.
For him, it has always been about community.