Summertime, and the livin’ is easy

1932 Graduation from Nazareth College in Kentucky. In the back row are Ursuline Sisters Mary Romuald Kennedy and Angeline Mattingly.

One need only have a Facebook account and be friends with a teacher (or be a teacher yourself) to know that summertime is anticipated eagerly, relished when present, and mourned over when complete. Summertime did not bring a break for the sisters as it does for many teachers now. Back home at Maple Mount from their various missions, sisters were busy with lectures, programs, and community days at the Motherhouse. But for a large number of sisters, summers were spent at colleges as they sought to earn advanced degrees. Consecrated religious in America were famous for teaching crowded classrooms in underfunded schools during the scholastic year and then during the summer continuing their own personal education, earning a degree (or many degrees) after years of hard work.

Ursuline Sisters among other students at St. Francis College in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Ursuline Sisters are Sisters Ursulita O’Bryan, Pierre Brady, Frances Xavier Miles, and Mary Joseph Peterson.

Mount Saint Joseph sisters attended a wide variety of colleges and universities, including

~Catholic University of America
~Creighton University
~Catholic Teachers College of New Mexico
~De Paul University
~Our Lady of the Lake College
~Nazareth College
~St. Louis University
~Webster College
~Marquette University
~Ursuline College
~University of Notre Dame, among many others.

Joined by sisters from other communities, the clergy and laity, these sisters dedicated themselves to their own education, thus improving their abilities as teachers.

Sister Aloise Boone refines her mechanic skills.

The archives holds the theses of the sisters, the result of their hard work. Examples of titles are

“St. Augustine’s Idea of Monasticism as Set Forth in His Correspondence,” Sister Mary Eulalia Blandford, 1931
“Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Compared with Older Forms of the Story,” Sister Lucille Blincoe 1939
“Coinage in Thomas Dekker’s Plays,” Sister Mary Jean Cotter, 1933
“Limitations of the Educational Theory of John Dewey in the Light of Christian Principles,” Sister Christina Eckmans, 1929
“The Trees of Kentucky,” Sister Angeline Mattingly, 1933
“The Ursulines of Mount Saint Joseph: A Religious Community as a Social System,” Sister Mary Regis Ramold, 1964
“The Know Nothing Party in Missouri, 1855-1860,” Sister Charles Asa Williams, 1945
“The Lute: Its History, Technique and Tablature,” Sister Marguerite Younker, 1939

In 1950 Sisters Mary Ivo Thompson and Rose Frances Mahoney participate in the Sisters Summer Symphony at Our Lady of the Lake College in San Antonio, Texas.