ABSTRACT
On a steep hill, in a fading district of a large American city, there are to be found the very unpretentious buildings of a small Catholic women's liberal arts college. Imaginative classroom instruction, well-trained sister faculty, enthusiastic and dedicated lay faculty, voluntary "theology workshops" to which the students swarm, an extraordinarily creative art department, and social commitment that brings better than one-quarter of the student body to inner-city work. St. Mary's is indeed a unique school in American higher education, one that is difficult to believe even when one is in the midst of it, and even more difficult once one has departed. St. Mary's college also points out the precise nature of the problem of the relationship between religious orders and colleges. The chapter concludes that the Catholic higher educational institutions improved for approximately the same reason that most small-or medium-size educational institutions improve—good leadership.
