Promise of opportunity

There is no greater honor I have had as president than shaking the hands of our new graduates as they receive their hard-earned degrees. At commencement, I am struck by the impact of our academic endeavor — and especially what it means for those who once believed a University of Dayton education was beyond their reach. 

Since 2018, I have been on the national steering committee of the American Talent Initiative. ATI includes college and university leaders from high graduation-rate universities who are dedicated to substantially expanding opportunities for lower- and moderate-income students. My work with ATI is, very simply, the most important, powerful and humbling work of my nearly 40 years in higher education. 

This spring, I stood before a room filled with 80 such leaders from every facet of higher education and spoke about what ATI means to UD and to the nation. We celebrated that, since our founding, ATI schools together have created opportunities for roughly 75,000 young people who might otherwise never have entered or graduated from college and will now contribute to our economy, democracy, scientific innovation and cultural life. 

This is a football stadium full of lower-income students and clearly defines success. 

At UD, we created new opportunities specifically for first-generation students; for those who choose community college as a pathway to their bachelor’s degree; and for those from under-resourced households. We created transparency in our pricing so families understand the full cost of a UD degree. We increased the aid UD offers students. We built cohort programs so students have the support of their peers. And we created wraparound services so a family emergency does not derail an education. 

As a Catholic, Marianist university, we engage in this work because we have a moral imperative to advance the common good — ensuring that every person, especially those with fewer resources, has the opportunity to reach their full potential. Fifteen years ago, our enrollment of students receiving need-based federal Pell grants was less than 10%; this past fall, for the second year in a row, our incoming class was 22% Pell-eligible. 

But a football stadium of graduates is not enough for ATI or for UD. We pledge to continue to work with others to ensure that opportunities for lower-income students are plentiful, adding to our nation’s and our University’s collective success, one proud handshake at a time. 

A version of this article appears in print in the Summer 2026 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 3. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE