Every year, colleges and universities across the country open their academic year with a convocation – a group of people assembled for a specific purpose. A simple enough definition, but in higher education, it is a symbolic opening of the academic year focused on welcoming in a new class of students and showing them what it means to be a part of their school’s community. Faculty dress in their academic regalia and a speaker shares their experience while offering advice to the assembled students. At Saint Peter’s University, though, convocation takes on another meaning as we celebrate a Michaelmas Convocation.
What is a Michaelmas Convocation? Fr. James Miracky, vice president of mission integration and ministry, offers us an explanation. “The convocation takes its name from the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (Michaelmas), celebrated on September 29. In medieval England, Michaelmas was one of the four traditional ‘Quarter Days’—pivotal dates on the calendar that marked the change of seasons and the end of the agricultural harvest. And the ‘mas’ part of Michaelmas actually refers to the traditions of having mass on that day, at which the convocation would originally have been a part.”
That’s the simple answer on the name’s origins, but how did we come to celebrate a Michaelmas Convocation at Saint Peter’s University? That came from Robert I. Gannon, S.J., the first dean in 1930 as the school began reopening following World War I. As Fr. Gannon restructured the academics of what was then Saint Peter’s College to still reflect the liberal arts and Jesuit tradition of its founding back in 1872, he also wanted to incentivize students to succeed. The Michaelmas Convocation would reward and recognize high achieving students with prizes and provide an opportunity for them to share essay defenses and capstone presentations from their classes. Fr. Gannon also championed academic oriented societies, personally founding The Order of the Cross Keys. That society and The Most Noble Order of the Peacock are recognized to this day at the current iteration of the Michaelmas Convocation at Saint Peter’s University.
St. Michael’s attributed virtues are courage, strength, and commitment to justice, similar to the Jesuit values we celebrate at Saint Peter’s University every day. At this year’s Michaelmas Convocation, taking place on Wednesday, September 30, the University will welcome as speaker Ann-Marie Nazzaro, Ph.D. ’70, executive director emerita of the Foundation for Women and Girls with Blood Disorders (FWGBD). Dr. Nazzaro is a true embodiment of those values, being one of the first women admitted to Saint Peter’s College when it became co-educational and starting FWGBD with three other internationally renowned physicians. Their objective was to educate health providers about the array of blood disorders that directly impact women and girls.
From its history to who it celebrates, a Michaelmas Convocation is about more than opening a new academic year. It’s bringing together a university community in shared values to celebrate one another and those who contributed for its past to its future.