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The President's Penultimate Message by Michael W Higgins Over the past six years, I have used this column to focus on matters pertaining to the critical role that can be played by a Roman Catholic, liberal arts university in Canada, and on the many things we are doing to make you, our graduates and supporters, proud of your association with St. Jerome's. This time I have news of a more personal nature. I will be departing as President of St. Jerome's on June 30, 2006. I am assuming new responsibilities as President and Vice-Chancellor of St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick--yet another of the impressive Catholic universities that have enriched the post-secondary landscape in Canada. I'm not saying good-bye quite yet I'll leave that for the Spring issue of SJU Update but I want to share some thoughts about what it means to me and to my family to leave a community, in which we--my spouse and partner, Krystyna, and our four children, Becca, Andrew, Sarah, and Alexa--have been deeply rooted since 1982. St. Jerome's and Kitchener-Waterloo are places where long-lasting and treasured friendships have been forged, where we have grown, personally and professionally, and where we have attempted to make our own unique contributions. As you can doubtless appreciate, this decision and time of transition are difficult. When I was first offered a position at St. Jerome's by President Norm Choate, I had been teaching at both St. Michael's College School and the University of St. Michael's College in Toronto. Bold efforts were made by the principals of those institutions to keep me there, but after a series of interviews with Fr. Choate, Peter Naus and Doug Letson, the opportunity to come to St. Jerome's seemed to be the right offer at the right time. Very few agreed. We received condolence cards, road maps highlighted with directions to Toronto, warnings that my future in the media was compromised, and less-than-subtle cautions from academics who wondered why I would deliberately choose to go to a backwater. We have never regretted our decision. St. Jerome's is a bold and imaginative place to be. I have been fortunate to participate in many exciting initiatives: the Centre for Catholic Experience, the Institute for Studies in Theological Renewal, Grail: an Ecumenical Journal, and the Catholics in Public Life Forum, to name just a few. In the last few years alone we have launched new undertakings to enrich the lives of our students and our SJU community: an investiture ceremony for incoming students and outreach programs for those living off-campus; a graduate degree in theology (Master of Catholic Thought); flourishing Legal Studies and Human Sciences programs; and cooperative agreements with universities in Hungary, Mexico, Poland and Italy and with the international social justice program, Intercordia. All of these things are possible because we work as a community, because the Academic Deans with whom I've worked, Kieran Bonner and Myroslaw Tataryn, share my commitment to the principles of collegiality and subsidiarity, because our faculty and staff are fully engaged in making SJU a place of excellence and growth. I will leave SJU deeply confident of its future as a place where community matters, where new ideas are welcome and new projects encouraged, and where faith and the intellectual life are seen, not as antagonistic, but as rich complements in the making of meaningful lives. Michael W. Higgins is President of St. Jerome's University. Photo: Ron Hewson St. Jerome's is a bold and imaginative place to be.