November 11, 2025 // Local

Holy Cross President Explores the ‘Purpose of University’

Scott Warden

Editor-In-Chief

In late October, Dr. Marco Clark, president of Holy Cross College in South Bend, spoke at a conference in Rome entitled “Purpose of the University.” The mission of the conference, which was hosted by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross from October 29-31, was to explore the key principles of a Catholic university, including “its governance and leadership, the institutional culture, and the people who are part of it (faculty, students, staff),” according to the conference’s website.

Represented by Clark and Dr. David Lutz, the acting chair of the college’s business department and a professor of philosophy, Holy Cross was the only North American university invited to participate at the conference.

In an interview with Today’s Catholic shortly after returning from Rome, Clark spoke about what an honor it was to have Holy Cross represented at such a prestigious conference, what he shared about Holy Cross that was so well received by leaders from around the world, the inspiration he received from Pope Leo XIV, and the misconceptions about educating young people today. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Today’s Catholic: How did the invitation come about for Holy Cross to be one of only two Catholic colleges in North America (along with the University of Notre Dame) to be represented at this conference in Rome?

Dr. Marco Clark: The invitation came from the Pontifical University of Santa Croce. One of their communications professors, Father José María La Porte, in the fall of 2023 was doing a fellowship over at the University of Notre Dame for the McGrath Institute. At Santa Croce, it’s a 10-year project, and every other year, there will be a planning group, or what they’re calling an “expert committee,” to plan the next year’s conference. … When that whole concept was being explained to the folks over at the McGrath Institute, they said they were going to be interviewing Catholic colleges and university presidents here in the United States to see if they would want to serve on this expert panel. In that conversation, the folks over at McGrath suggested they speak to us here at Holy Cross. Literally that same day, I got a phone call from McGrath saying that Father José María would love to come talk, and so we did.

Today’s Catholic: What do you think it says about the work being done by the administration, faculty, and staff at Holy Cross? I’m guessing it was seen as both a validation of the mission of Catholic education as well as a challenge to continue such high level of instruction.

Clark: I think, first off, we saw it as a real honor. It’s just a huge honor because this small college, which can so easily be overlooked, not only as a partner here in the tri-campus community, but across the country in the Catholic landscape, where there are 225 Catholic colleges and universities in the United States, and we’re one of the smallest. And we’re not a research university, so often the attention doesn’t come toward the small Catholic liberal arts teaching colleges like ours. So, it really helped to elevate our internal self -image and self-efficacy, but it also helped to proclaim that there’s something special that’s happening at Holy Cross College. I think what it means for us, and it’s also an affirmation for our students in that there’s an intentionality about teaching and learning at Holy Cross College that’s core to our mission, and that there has been a recognition of this human integral formation and human flourishing and how that’s all tied directly to the Church.

This was especially meaningful because during the conference they also named St. John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church, and very much core to the principles of the university and the other writings from John Henry Newman is the intentionality that Catholic colleges and universities are called to teach according to a Catholic worldview, within the Catholic intellectual tradition, and, today, with an emphasis on Catholic social teaching. That integration of academics and faith formation was part of what they saw in Holy Cross, and that’s what they asked me to speak on – the intentionality to help further define what it means to do teaching research and what the Europeans refers to as “the third mission.”

Of course, in our minds, this integration is the first and really the only mission – to create encounters with Christ. So, the point of my part of the presentation was: How do we do that at Holy Cross?

Today’s Catholic: That leads right into my next question, which is: What did you and Dr. Lutz share with the conference regarding the execution of this mission at Holy Cross?

Clark: I’ll go back a little bit. As I mentioned, this is a 10-year project for Santa Croce. The 2024-25 academic year was the first year of it, and they spent that year planning for the conference, and they began to look thematically the ideas and concepts, and the theme “The Purpose of the University” emerged for the first conference.

It was remarkable. There were nearly 300 attendees from all over the world – from Mexico and from the Philippines and from Australia, from Nigeria and Kenya, from Brazil, from Chile. … So, for folks from around the world to be in the room to hear about what we’re doing at Holy Cross College was incredible, and they found it to be very inspiring. And, really, it was exciting for me. …

Dr. David Lutz presented specifically on how we integrate the mission of the faith in business: How do we integrate the Catholic liberal arts, the Catholic intellectual tradition, and Catholic social teaching in an integrated fashion – not as parallel paths that tend to happen at most colleges and universities … but as an integrated approach that invites the humanities and the theologians and the English professors and the historians to teach in the business college, and then, as well, the business college is integrating within the liberal arts. There’s an intentionality around the coursework, and then there’s that thread of consistency throughout.

I was part of a panel, and the person who I shared the panel with is from the Philippines and a really brilliant scholar and academic leader. We were asked to come up with three questions that we would then answer for ourselves. What I was able to speak specifically about is the formation over the last three years at Holy Cross College of this newly formed integrated curriculum and then the Socratic method seminar-style approach and cohort-based approach that we take starting with freshman year through their senior year where students are really asking themselves the deep questions: Who am I? Whose am I? What is my purpose in life?

Through a series of deep readings and in Socratic seminar fashion, and then one-on-one reflections with faculty members, students are really brought through an intentional education and formation that is a bit of an inside-out proposition. I referenced the work of Jonathan Haidt, who wrote the book called “The Anxious Generation,” and how this particular generation of students were really the ones that were at the onset of social media. Everyone had a cellphone from the time they were very young, and then they went into COVID. And so, there’s been this disconnect in this particular generation of real human connection with one another, authentic human connection and community connection.

So, to that point, this set of classes that we’ve developed is helping to root them more deeply. It’s helping to root them not only in a place, but also with one another.

Today’s Catholic: What does that look like on a practical level for students at Holy Cross?

Clark: It’s a four-part seminar series. The first class is called “The Questions of the Mind and Heart,” and our faculty have developed a specific reader for each one of these classes. So, they’re reading a common set of readings, some of them steeped in classical Western tradition. They’re reading everything from theologians and historians and philosophers and ancient philosophers even before Christ, and then of course Christian philosophers who came after. They are being very intentionally led through a process of answering those questions – questions of the mind and heart. The second year is a course called “The College Seminar,” which focuses in on, OK, now how do we take this set of principles that we learned about ourselves and begin to apply that to our lived practical college experience as college students.

Year 3 is called “The Common Good Seminar,” which begins to focus on how you take these lessons and live them in the community. And that’s what they call “the third mission” in the European system – how is your college really rooted in the community that you’re a part of?

And then the fourth is called our capstone or our Moreau seminar. That’s where students have a chance to reflect holistically and actually to report: This is what I’ve learned during my years here. This is how I’ve grown. This is how I plan to apply what I’ve learned here into the real world.

I often finish most of my speeches by saying that I can’t wait for the day where this group of students are the ones who are in positions of influence in boardrooms, and operating rooms, and legislative rooms, and classrooms, and churches, and communities, and in their own homes, because the way that they’re being formed as Christian disciples, this is really answering the call to discipleship in a very intentional way.

Today’s Catholic: Apologies for drilling down a little there, but is this what you told the audience in Rome?

Clark: Yes. I walked through three questions that I presented. One was on the integrated curriculum itself. The second one was on how we do research.

We’re not a research university, but a primary function of all faculty members of the university life is to do research. We don’t put the pressure on our faculty to do research, but if they do want to do research, we just ask them two things: invite your students to be a part of your research … and then also have that research be rooted. It could be rooted here in the community, it could be rooted nationally, or could even be internationally. I presented four examples of how that’s being done.

We just had a group of students who returned from Poland. This is their second year working with Ukrainian refugee children to teach them trauma informed therapy, resilience, growth mindset, single-intervention approach, so that this group of children who have suffered such devastation as refugees don’t become a lost generation?

The students turn around and they co-publish with their faculty; they present at international conferences, and they tend to be the only undergraduate representatives at these international conferences. So, this is a teaching and learning practice, but it also shows them how to apply these lessons to be a force for good in the world.

We’ve got a chemistry professor who, in partnership with Notre Dame, is testing pharmaceuticals that are being sent to developing nations. They are finding that many of them are counterfeit or they’re diluted. They’re asking: How do we address this to make sure that the life-saving drugs that developing nations can get are pure and that they’re what they’re intended to be. …

The third question was focused on how we are addressing the polarization that we’re experiencing as a country and even as a Church, and the simple reminder there goes back to the root word of Catholic, the Greek term, which is “attending to the whole,” and how we spend our time and effort attending to the whole of the individual as agents of the Church. 

Our identity is as Catholics and Christians, and that’s how we remedy or grapple with the polarization that exists in the Church. So those are the three things that they asked me to talk on.

Today’s Catholic: Hearing this perspective is interesting, because we’re in an age where we expect instant gratification, but in your work – in the work of everyone in education, really – you don’t immediately see the fruit of the work that you’re doing in the lives of these students. Those fruits are going to be seen down the road by their employers, by their future spouses, and elsewhere. You’re building something here and then you just hope that it takes, right?

Clark: That’s the optimism; it’s the optimism and it’s the joyful hope. Pope Benedict XVI said that “those who have hope live differently.” It is the joyful hope that we live with because, really, this is the purpose of a Catholic college or university.

There are 4 ,600 colleges in this country that are preparing kids for a job, and we’ll make sure our students are job ready; they’re going to be career ready, but they’re going to be more than just job and career ready. They’re going to be leaders in those industries, and they’re going to be people of influence in those industries.

Holy Cross students are going to be, as Father Sorin talked about when they founded the University of Notre Dame, forces for good in whatever platform they’re on. Whether I’m a stay-at-home dad or mom in my community, in my church, or a corporate CEO, or a lawyer, or a teacher, or an engineer – how can I make sure that we are contributing on issues of life, on issues of human dignity, and on issues of the common good?

Today’s Catholic: While you were in Rome, Pope Leo released an apostolic letter on Catholic education – Disegnare Nuove Mappe di Speranza (“Drawing New Maps of Hope”). You also attended an audience with the pope. How did Pope Leo inspire your mission as president of Holy Cross College while you were there?

Clark: His letter was referred to many times throughout the conference, and we were there during the kickoff of the Jubilee of the World of Education, so there were educators from all over the world there. One of the things he said to the educators was, of course, a thank you for what we do, but also a reminder that education is an act of love and education is an act of hope. That’s what we talk about here at Holy Cross. We talk about forming students as innovative Catholic intellectual scholars, as courageous citizens for this world and for heaven, as virtuous leaders who are really steeped in understanding virtue and who are intentionally being taught and led and formed in virtue – we call it leading the Holy Cross way – and then, ultimately, how they can leave here as hopeful and passionate disciples of Christ? How can they respond to their call to holiness, their call to discipleship?

Today’s Catholic: In his apostolic letter, Pope Leo talks about the need to usher in a new season of Catholic education. It seems that Holy Cross is not only participating in this but perhaps at the forefront of it.

Clark: That’s a hope of ours. I’ve said rather boldly that I believe that in the coming years that you’ll read about Holy Cross emerging as a national premier Catholic college or university, but what does it mean to be premier? That doesn’t mean elitist, that doesn’t mean exclusive, but it does mean intentional, and it does mean maybe even one of a kind in many ways.

What is it that we can do in this vast ocean of 4,600 ocean liners that make up colleges and universities, and then the 225 Catholic colleges and universities? How can we swim in a pool of distinction? We’ve been talking about that for a couple of years, so to have it affirmed through this document by Pope Leo was just really, again, affirming for us and edifying for us that we’re heading in the right direction.

It also served as a real reminder that what we do is different. There are lots of purposes out there for other educators, but those of us that are in Catholic education have a very specific call, and that is to help people get to heaven.

Today’s Catholic: You’ve spent your career in Catholic education – from secondary education to now at Holy Cross. What are the challenges in educating young people today, and what are the misconceptions people have about the current generation of college students?

Clark: I think that one of the biggest narratives that we have to shut out and ignore is that we want to talk about “kids these days,” as I put that term in air quotes, and the problems of today’s world. And there are real concerns. But those are things of this world. Those are external forces that influence how we raise our children and the kinds of things that our kids are facing. But at the heart of all of us as humans is a search for truth, and at the heart of all of us as humans is the need to love and be loved. At the heart of all of us as humans is a search to find purpose, and we have to stay focused on the heart of the matter.

In educating and forming both our mind and the heart, let’s be reminded of the heart of the matter – namely, that they are seeking truth, that they do want to love and be loved, and they want to identify their purpose.

There may be more challenges today because of the distractions of the world and noises of the world, but how do we help them disconnect even for a moment? One of our students shared in a personal reflection that she feels like she lost her entire childhood to her cellphone and social media, and she can’t go back and do that all over again. But our job is to discover: What can we do now to help students discover truth, beauty, and goodness in this world that we live in and the people that we encounter? The misconceptions are that the kids are different, society’s different, how we raise them is different. But at the heart of who we are, there is this search for truth. There is this search for purpose. There is this search for love and being loved, and that’s where we have to remain focused.

Today’s Catholic: Do you think young people today are becoming more intentional about trying to figure this out and ask these deeper questions?

Clark: I think when students make a choice to come to Holy Cross, they come to it knowing that the way we’re going to approach it is different. This is not transactional; this is transformational. So, we invite them into a deeper dialogue with themselves. We invite them to be reflective and contemplative people. We’re inviting them to dig deeper into their soul as they prepare themselves to be citizens for this world and for heaven. I think they know that coming in. …

They’re being formed and educated in a bubble here. We understand that, and so do they. When they graduate, they’re going to have to go out into that world to where there are many other distractions and many other naysayers – and a lot more negativity, and maybe they don’t have all like-minded people around them. Our goal is to make sure that we strengthen them enough to where they can be those hopeful, joyful disciples at all times, despite those distractions and challenges.

Scott Warden is editor-in-chief of Today’s Catholic.