IHM Sponsorship

Marywood University is one of the sponsored institutions of the Congregation of Sisters, Servants, of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Scranton, Pennsylvania. Sponsorship is the relationship by which the Sisters of IHM exercise stewardship as a means to assure fidelity to the ministries of the Catholic Church as reflected in the mission of the Congregation and the missions of its sponsored institutions.

The founders of the Congregation, Rev. Louis Florent Gillet, C.Ss.R. and Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin, IHM, could not have envisioned the complexity of governance and administration of sponsored institutions today, as they deal with contemporary legal, financial, and ethical challenges.

Marywood University, an education community spirited by the mission of the IHM Congregation, lives out its own mission with a commitment to spiritual, ethical and religious values, and a tradition of service. Thus, it enables people of all ages to develop fully as persons called by God to become free, authentic, and moral.

The mission of the University, reflective of the mission of its sponsor, continues to be highly relevant today as a force for good in society. On the one hand, as a living community sponsored by the IHM Congregation, the University continues in its strategic and operational planning to further the goal of expanded understanding of Catholic identity and the nature of IHM sponsorship. On the other hand, as the sponsoring community, the IHM Congregation prepares individual Sisters for institutional service, maintains a mission-effectiveness program, and promotes the relationship between the Congregation and the University. Over the years, the IHM Congregation has chosen consistently to maintain a commitment to the governance, administration, and staffing of Marywood University.

Marywood University is incorporated, through a legal relationship determined by civil and canon law, as a public charitable corporation. It has a membership model of corporate governance that divides authority between the Members of the Corporation and the Board of Trustees. The Members of the Corporation are the President of the Congregation together with her Council. The Board of Trustees is made up of lay and religious persons who have the fiduciary responsibility, along with the Members of the Corporation, of promoting the corporate purpose and preserving the mission of the University in conformity with the spirit and mission of the IHM Congregation.

The Members of the Corporation have certain reserved authority to approve decisions of the Board of Trustees. These, which relate to the identity, philosophy, mission, and property of Marywood University, are defined in the Bylaws of the University.

History

09/08/15 - Since the opening of the University (then College) in 1915, the Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Scranton, PA, has been the sole sponsor of the institution.