By Hannah Gordon
News Editor
The St. Bonaventure University President was honored Sept. 16 with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2014 Women of Influence luncheon, sponsored by Business First, a leading Buffalo business magazine.
Sr. Margaret Carney, O.S.F., was nominated for the award and voted on by a committee of five women, four of whom have previously received the award.
Although Carney was honored for leading the university following the 2003 NCAA basketball scandal, as well as orchestrating fundraising campaigns to bring in more than $125 million and forging the partnership with Hilbert College, she says she is most proud of what the accomplishments represent, rather than the acts themselves.
“I think being able to raise that much money in a small, faith-based college is a very good record of leadership,” Carney said. “When you write a check for a million dollars to a university, which a lot of people did during that campaign, that shows that the administration is going in the right direction and people have confidence in the leader.”
Carney sees that confidence as trust in not only her leadership, but the university as well.
“It was very clear that I was getting credit for being an effective leader because people were putting money in our hands to use to improve the University, and you only give money to people that you trust,” Carney said. “You don’t give money to people you don’t trust. It wasn’t about the money, it was about the trust that the money expresses; trust in the steps that the administration was making.”
That trust shows that Buffalo sees St. Bonaventure as a part of the city, despite its geographic location, according to Carney.
“Our school is quite a distance from the city of Buffalo, so the fact that the people of the greater Buffalo community are recognizing and embracing St. Bonaventure is wonderful,” Carney said. “We work hard to be a part of the Buffalo region, but sometimes I worry that people don’t see or understand us as clearly as they might understand the schools there are right there near the city.”
Carney said she was extremely touched the Buffalo community accepted St. Bonaventure in such a way.
“It’s like they’re saying ‘We get that you’re committed to the Buffalo region, and we want to give you a chance to be seen by the region as a driving force and a participant in the city’s growth and the city’s welfare,” Carney said. “We’re trying to do this for our students, but also for the economy of Western New York.”
“The economy of WNY gets built up every time we hire. Every time we build a building, we’re putting money in the pockets of construction workers. [If] we take out an ad, we’re putting money in the coffers of a Buffalo company. As a part of a region that has had tough economic times, we’re trying to ensure that this community rebounds and gets to be a really top-notch place to live and work, so I feel like we were recognized as we were doing our part.”
Carney described herself as a driven person who is constantly working on a new project.
“I can never turn off my mind,” Carney said. “I’m always trying to think about how to solve a problem and how to achieve something. I finish one task and I’m right on to the next. I have ideas every day that I’ll have to discard as there is no way I can get this done because of my schedule, because other people won’t agree, because other people won’t see what I see, so my life is a trail of broken ideas of things I couldn’t accomplish at the same time that I was accomplishing what I’ve accomplished.”
Carney said some of her ideas are being used to improve campus with the student experience in mind. Right now, the university is working to improve the curriculum, renew and rethink programs and continue the physical renovation of campus, according to Carney.
“We want to renovate Murphy and Plassmann. We want to add the softball field,” Carney said. “There are many facilities needs in athletics, but there are equally large numbers of facilities needs for academics, and we need to make sure that we’re keeping pace with those as well. Now, I won’t get all of that done in my lifetime, but we keep chipping away at it.“
