Since the start, Mount Saint Mary College has been steeped in the four pillars of Dominican life: study, spirituality, service, and community. It’s taken the work of many dedicated individuals to get us to this 60th anniversary milestone, including these four outstanding pillars of the Mount.
Priscilla Sagar
Professor Emerita of Nursing
Over the course of two decades - from 1998 to 2018 - an integral part of the Mount’s School of Nursing, and she continues to support the Mount in many ways. For years, Sagar helped to coordinate the community health nursing program at the Mount, where she and her students put transcultural nursing into practice. Her colleagues and students helped her to author two books in her focus area of transcultural nursing, giving nurses the tools they need to be more effective caregivers for people from all cultures.
Sagar, who holds a doctor of Education degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, has received many accolades for her hard work, including being named a New York Academy of Medicine Fellow and receiving the Columbia University Teachers College’s R. Louis McManus Medal. One of her proudest moments came near the end of 2019, when she was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Sagar is one of only 2,600 nurse leaders in the world to have achieved this honor.
How has the Mount grown over the years?
The college has changed tremendously. The School of Nursing has many more students, and there are many more programs, both graduate and undergraduate – not just in Nursing. We’ve upgraded our technology and changed with the times.
What are the best memories of your first years teaching at the Mount?
I enjoyed teaching Community Health Nursing classes, clinical work, and guiding students to implement their Healthy People projects. With these projects, the students went into the local community and taught the benefits of hand washing, proper nutrition, physical activity, and more. I got to know the community in Newburgh, and I felt really good teaching them. My students and I were making a difference! And making a difference really left an impression on me, on the students, and on the community. Nursing students are still doing these community education projects to this day.
Why is it important for our Nursing students to serve the community?
The City of Newburgh is one of the most underserved communities in the nation, and every individual at the college is part of this community. Our Nursing students can make a difference by being in the community, involved in service-learning and community health. And when they graduate, they’ll be leaders in the movement towards positive health outcomes.
What should Mount Nursing graduates remember as they begin their careers in our community?
Critical thinking, clinical judgment, empathy, and compassion are key traits of good nurses, and it’s part of our curriculum. Our Nursing students also have the ability to give culturally and linguistically appropriate care. These are the things I really emphasized to my students. These are the things I’m proud to see them carry on.
Irene Nunnari
Professor Emerita of Arts and Letters
Irene Nunnari’s connection to the Dominican Sisters began in 1963, when a chance encounter with Sr. Mary Immaculate McLaughlin, OP at a Villanova University acting class first introduced her to the Dominicans and the Mount. She taught at Academia San José in Bayamón, Puerto Rico for two years, a girls’ academy run by the Newburgh Dominicans, before coming to the Mount in 1966 as director of Public Relations. She soon transitioned into a role in the English faculty, where she remained for the next five decades. During her tenure at the Mount, Nunnari was chair of the English department, which eventually became the Division of Arts and Letters; helped develop the Communications program; directed the Mount’s Cultural Centre; and was actively involved in Vespers and MSMC Theatre, often helping to direct or even acting in the plays. Now as a professor emerita, she is still an active member of the college, occasionally teaching a Shakespeare course or attending alumni events.
What was the atmosphere like at the Mount in the 1960s?
In his Pensées, Pascal wrote, “All things are best at their beginning.” That’s where we were: at an exciting beginning of a brand new college, with all of the founders at the helm...These women were intrepid in their determination, dedication, and faith. It was a very exciting time.
What opportunities did the Mount offer to students in the early days?
The doors of [the college] were open to almost anyone with the dedication to pursue higher education. You might not be a Rhodes Scholar, but if you were willing to work, the opportunity was offered. I have always believed that what we did best in those years was to present a chance to achieve at the college level. Our success stories abound.
How do knowledge and study help prepare students for their futures?
I believe that few endeavors demand more discipline and determination than pursuing a college degree. Succeeding in that challenge does indeed prepare one for almost anything. Hard work, self-awareness, the feeling of achievement at finishing the goal, and meeting the rigors of a course of study are characteristics that can stay with you throughout life.
How do extracurricular activities augment study?
Those experiences augment scholarship in a crucial way, because— especially in theatre — one’s innate personal gifts and qualities can flourish. It demands determination, cooperation, leadership, and one’s artistic gifts that aren’t typically summoned up in the classroom setting, although my students will tell you that I got them up out of their classroom seats to recite, perform, or sing whenever possible.
How would you encourage your students to embrace these gifts?
Each semester, we would find a flat open space — like the Atrium, the porch, the stage in Whittaker Hall, the Science Lecture Hall, the dining room, and of course Aquinas Theatre —and perform. Those moments really stand out, because it’s one thing to read Shakespeare, but if you can speak Shakespeare, if you can stand up before a crowd and perform the battle cry of Henry V at Agincourt...well then, I think you have really learned something.
Sr. Agnes Boyle, OP
Former Vice President for Academic Affairs
Sr. Agnes Boyle, OP spent more than 50 years serving Mount Saint Mary College. She started her career in 1963 as an assistant professor of Education, chairing the division for nine years. She also served as principal of Bishop Dunn Memorial School for five years, beginning in 1969. However, Sr. Boyle was best known for her tenure as Vice President for Academic Affairs (VPAA), a role she lovingly filled for three decades. When she stepped down as VPAA, she began the work of Mission Integration, followed by curating the college’s archives.
Among countless other accomplishments, Sr. Boyle oversaw the implementation of graduate programs and degree completion at the Mount. Since 2017, high-achieving seniors in the Mount’s degree completion program have been deemed Boyle Scholars in recognition of her tireless determination and love of academics.
Sr. Boyle passed away on Sunday, November 10, 2019, but her legacy lives on: The Vice President for Academic Affairs suite will be renamed in her honor in the coming months.
“Sr. Agnes made innumerable contributions to the college. Without her endless dedication and devotion, it is clear that the Mount simply wouldn’t be the institution it is today.”
Dr. Jason N. Adsit
President of the Mount
“Sr. Agnes Boyle placed an unmistakable stamp on the Mount. Through her devotion to detail and order, through her honesty, courage, and faith, she inspired awe and respect in everyone...Her quiet demeanor, her ready smile, her total lack of ostentation, and her positive attitude influenced the Mount for nearly five decades and beyond. The college matured, deepened, and broadened under her faith-filled example and academic leadership.”
Sr. Ann Sakac, OP
Fourth president of the Mount
"Sr. Agnes’s love and dedication to the college cannot be challenged. She spent all but a few years of her ministry at the Mount and she gave her all to the development of the college. I was her student and she was an exceptional teacher – she modeled good teaching. As VPAA, she led the college’s academic side with one goal: growth of the college as an excellent academic institution. And she was tireless in that pursuit...When I visited Sr. Agnes [before she passed], her first question was about the health of the college. She was still demonstrating the courage she exemplified when on campus and the integrity that marked her tenure here.”
Sr. Catherine Walsh, OP
Professor emerita of Communications
“I am so very glad that I knew Sr. Agnes and so very grateful for the opportunities she made possible. Like the other extraordinary Dominican Sisters who led the college forward, she worked tirelessly to promote academic excellence in the belief that the search for truth, individually and collectively, leads us deeper into the beautiful mystery of God’s love for all His creation.”
Toni Saldivar
Professor emerita of English
Rae Fallon
Professor of Psychology
Rae Fallon arrived at the Mount in 1985 and has been a warm and welcoming presence on campus ever since. In addition to preparing countless numbers of Psychology students for their careers, her Honors Introduction to Psychology course touched students of all majors as they began their studies at the Mount. Her courses, many of which she built herself, include Psychology of Stress, Child Psychology, and Drugs and Society, which echo her research interests in early childhood development, the Autism spectrum disorder, and infants exposed to drugs in utero.
Throughout her 34 years at the college, Fallon has actively served the community both at the Mount and in Orange County. She has volunteered as a member of the Board of Directors for Head Start of Orange County and as a Eucharistic Minister and member of the Altar Rosary Society at Holy Name of Mary Church in Montgomery, N.Y. She has also given generously of her time to many committees at the Mount over the years, including the Honors Program.
What was the Mount like when you arrived in the 1980s?
It was smaller in many ways. You knew almost everyone on campus. Additionally, the longevity of Sr. Ann Sakac, OP and Sr. Agnes Boyle, OP was very important. It was a very comfortable time.
Tell us about a moment that stands out in your 34 years at the college.
When I was starting out in psychology, my research focused on the effects of crack cocaine in babies who were born from mothers with addictions. I worked with these babies until they were 8 years old. Several years later, here at the Mount, a student asked me if I was Dr. Rae Fallon. I responded that I was, and she asked if I remembered her. She was one of my babies! I burst into tears as she comforted me and told me that she was doing well. It was such a monumental moment seeing her as a college student.
Many of your students will end up with a career in the helping professions. How do you help them prepare for these lives of service?
The ability to help is always dramatically changing. Because of this, our students need to be lifelong learners. Students need the opportunity to question and get passionate about wanting to learn. I teach them to be skeptical of what they read and hear and to ask questions. Learning in and of itself changes who you are for the better.
How does service impact students' study here at the Mount?
Being able to use theoretical knowledge and see how it affects others is crucial to the experience here at the college. Particularly in my Child Psychology and Autism courses, working with a real person is very different than a textbook. There is a dynamic change in attitude from reading a textbook to working one-on-one.
What do you view as an educator's role to serve students both inside and outside of the classroom?
I believe an educator’s role is to help students discover their own passion. Once they discover that, everything else falls into place. So our role is to mentor, advise, and help them discover who they are.
