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When it comes to education, Sister Marie Majella Berg is a nun who can't say no. Sister Majella had the vision and energy to build Marymount University in Arlington into a university both the church and the community can point to with pride.
By the time she retired in 1993 after 33 years as Marymount's president, Sister Majella had transformed a small, white-glove women's junior college into a thriving university offering bachelor's and master's degree programs to 4,000 male and female students on four Northern Virginia campuses.
Sister Majella started out as a Latin teacher in New York; she planned to spend her life in the classroom. "I loved the subject, I loved the students," she says. Most of all she loved the challenge of enticing unwilling students to learn Latin, of bringing the ancient language to life.
Sister Majella got her master's degree in classics at Fordham University and became registrar at the New York City branch of Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York. But she made it clear that she hoped to return to teaching. Then, in 1957, she was asked to be registrar for a year at Marymount's offShoot in Virginia. She returned to New York's Marymount for two years and came back to the Arlington College for good in 1960.
Arlington's Marymount had grown from a high school to a 240-student junior college - mostly a "transfer school" for girls who had been rejected by the colleges of their choice.
"I never thought much of a two-year college," says Sister Majella. "I said, if they are going, I want to make sure they are better prepared."
By the time Sister Majella moved into the president's office in 1960, the school was no longer a Tarrytown stepchild, but it still had a long way to go. After hearing an education expert say that it took a quantity of students to assure excellence, she increased the number of students and the size of the school's facilities. She became an expert on government grantsmanship, land-use permits, and community relations.
Sister Majella did more than go with the flow of the area's changing higher education needs - she created programs to exploit new opportunities. Marymount has offered programs at the Pentagon, at corporate offices in McLean and Reston, and on a Loudoun County campus. Its retraining programs are geared to people with degrees who want to advance.
Now chancellor of Marymount, working on a history of the university and building its alumni network, Sister Majella is modest about her successes. How did she do it?
"There was no secret except to follow what was needed and do the best to fulfill the need," she says. "And prayer, of course."
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