Brescia University President Madison Silvert spoke with his counterpart at Gannon University recently, the Florida college that merged with Ursuline College in Cleveland in 2025 – leaving Brescia as the only Ursuline college left in the United States.

“He said the hardest thing to do is change,” Silvert told a gathering of Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph on Feb. 12, 2026. “I told him, ‘I’m going to give you a quote from Saint Angela Merici that all those coming from an Ursuline university will know. Know the signs of the times and make the necessary adjustments,’” Silvert said.

“Brescia is your legacy,” Silvert told the Sisters. “We all feel the weight of it.”

The Owensboro university is concluding its Centennial celebration year, marking the time from 1925 when the Ursuline Sisters founded the Mount Saint Joseph Junior College for Women. The college moved to Owensboro in 1950 to become the coed Brescia College.

Silvert and some fellow Brescia staff members came to the Mount to share photos of the Brescia-led 2025 trip to Italy to walk in the footsteps of Saint Angela, and to update the Sisters on what has been happening at the university since Silvert began as president April 1.

The college has simplified its mission statement to, “We are a Catholic Ursuline University forming compassionate, critical thinkers through a holistic and deeply personal education.” He also spoke of having just two objectives for Brescia:

• Every student knows their plan for graduation and believes they can.
• Securing a thriving financial future.

The graduation rate at Brescia was 33 percent in 2024, but up to 47 percent in 2025, Silvert said. The goal is to continue improving that rate, and one way to help students is through a program called Pathfinders. These are people beyond an academic advisor who are there to listen and support a student to help them graduate. The first group of 30 is being formed now.

“Our faculty is just one part of the Brescia community,” Silvert said. “How can we utilize other parts of the staff to encourage students to graduate? As a junior in college, I was going through some things. The person who I could talk to was the custodian in our building. I think about that when I think of how we can alert students to the resources available to them.”

Financially, Brescia will end the fiscal year in the black for the first time in five years, Silvert said. There are 704 students at Brescia now, counting online and graduate students.

Brescia is adding a physicians assistance program, which is already drawing great interest from around the country. The goal is to have 30 students in the first cohort, and Silvert said Brescia has 200 applicants from 35 states.

Another change at Brescia was creating the term “general resident students,” rather than labeling them as “nonathletes” – the term most colleges use. Silvert credited the change to Sister Sharon Sullivan, who serves on the Brescia Board of Directors because she is congregational leader of the Ursuline community.

“She said ‘no one should be defined by what they are not,’” Silvert said.