President's Message

Dear Friends:

Faculty members at the University of the Incarnate Word don’t just teach in the classroom – they teach in their community.

This issue of The Word puts the spotlight on one such set of faculty members: professors in our College of Nursing and Health Professions. They are making a difference in San Antonio neighborhoods with a parish nursing outreach program that impacts the city and continues Incarnate Word's tradition of caring and compassion.

This issue also showcases our burgeoning study abroad programs, which give students terrific opportunities to experience different cultures within an academic context.

International opportunities were practically non-existent at Incarnate Word as recently as the mid-1990s. However, because most of our students had never been outside of South Texas, we decided to create a framework that would allow them to study beyond our borders, educational efforts that would also be in keeping with our institutional history and that of our sponsoring Congregation, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.

Now it's common for UIW students to travel the globe to far-flung destinations like Russia, Brazil, Italy, China, Japan and South Korea, to name but a few.

In conjunction with our internationalization efforts, those of you with sharp eyes for details will notice that something's missing from the pages of this issue – the "Crusader" mascot logo. After serving us for more than 20 years, the Crusader mascot was dropped in May, when we unveiled our new mascot, the Cardinals.

Alumni have asked us, "Why change the mascot?" The answer is simple. While the spiritual foundation remains the same, the University of the Incarnate Word in the 21st century is, in many respects, a different institution than Incarnate Word College, as we were known in 1980 when the Crusader was adopted as the school mascot.

A stroll around the campus quickly reveals just how much we've changed in the past two decades, as you can spot students speaking in a multitude of languages besides English, like Chinese, Spanish, Turkish and Portuguese. That's in sharp contrast to 24 years ago, when the student population was largely Anglo, Catholic and from the United States (more specifically, from South Texas).

While today's Incarnate Word remains grounded in its Catholic heritage, we now have students from many different Christian denominations as well as non-Christian faiths. The student body is approximately 60 percent Hispanic and African-American. Another nine percent of the students are international in origin, with those students representing nearly 40 countries, including several in the Middle East.

In choosing a new school mascot, we wanted a symbol that would better reflect not just the university, but also the international component of our academic mission. So with much of the discord in the world generated by religious and cultural differences, the Crusader was not an appropriate image because of its historical ties to conflicts based on the very differences we're trying to bridge.

Late in the spring, alumni, students, faculty and staff cast more than 4,000 votes in an online poll that featured 46 options for a new mascot. The Cardinals emerged as one of four finalists.

After much discussion, we decided the Cardinals were the most appropriate choice for us for several reasons, most importantly that, as birds, the Cardinals represent an ideal we promote – that a college education can make your dreams take flight.

Viewed from the larger perspective of internationalization, the new mascot, like the parish nursing outreach program and our varied study abroad programs, offers the potential to promote greater harmony by accentuating commonalities rather than divisiveness. And because universities often bring together diverse groups of people, they offer ideal settings for positive personal interaction between folks of different
backgrounds.

I encourage you to read the rest of The Word for an update on all of our recent activities. In the meantime, let me thank you for your steadfast support. It's that support that allows us to continue fulfilling Incarnate Word's goal of offering students the best possible education within a context of faith. Special blessings on you and your loved ones.

Best Wishes,

Louis J. Agnese, Jr., Ph.D.
President