News Scrapbook 1980-1981

Local w TheArts I Letters tt /Part II

Th domed lmmaculata and the Foundc s Chapel far nght dominate this view of the Umvers y of San Diego campus, which 1s situated high 10 Years on the Job re en Gui

nt has m.:ire than doubled, cltrnbmg m 1 , 1 to a record 4,750 expected 'or the first time, admm1strators m1 1qns penod early. e, ttr1h).lt much of th progress to school business teacher, tur ed college professor and adminis- trator. Uis ex erience before USD was mostly m pub a:: educ lion. Tho~e who know him say the lan~y. 6-faot, 4-mch president has plunged into fu4d-ra1smg and community service ac- tivities with the same kind of vigor he devotes to tennis and sailing, breaking new ground for USO in the pr(){'e . "I think he has made the umversity more visible. e certainly has been a good adminis- trator n the area of finance," said Kim Fletchqr, pres dent 1f Home Federal Savings & Loan aiid a USO boa ·dmember. Fie her said Hughes had · strengthened USD's abilit) to raise funds - a must if the tuition-dependent private institution is to ex- pand a17d butld new facilities - by roadening the me¥Jbership of its board of trustees to in- clude more business and community leaders from ~n Diego and throughout Califorma. Fletcher, for example, Joined the board two years ago at the personal request of Hughes. Please ffe HUGHES, Pa1e 2 Hugh 1• a former high

In some way , . Hughes once seemed a most unlikely candidate to head a umvers1ty - espec1aUy a Roman Cathohc school such as the University of San Diego. lege as far as grades go," recalls MarJOrie Ann Hughes, who met her husband while both were students at Eastern Illinois University some 30 years ago. ..He did all right, but he had a lot of fun too." As a boy growing up in Hoopesl9n, Ill., a small farming town known in those parts as "the corn canning center of the world," Hughes was reared a Methodist. As an adult, he was a sporadic church-goer (he'd go "where the music was good") until he con- verted to Catholicism at age 26. A long-time co-worker and friend says Hughes decided to attend college largely be- cause a summer job at the local canning factory convinced him that a career in the cannery was not for him. So how did the 51-year-old Hughes, who celebrates his 10th anniversary as the first lay- mart president of USO this month, become both a devout Catholic and a skilled administrator who built a financially strapped institution struggling for identity mto a self-sufficient, re- spected university? Slow, Careful Proce11.1 The answer 1s step by step. USO has grown from two tiny, predominantly Catholic liberal arts colleges that were once as cloistered from the surrounding San Diego community as the nuns and priests who ran them, into a major educational force among Catholic universities in California. Today the university offers a di- verse academic program. About half the graduate students and one-fourth of the undergraduates are non-Catholic. The athletic, snowy-haired Hughes has pre- sided over major change and growth at the 32- year-old university at a time when many other private colleges are folding or struggling to stay afloat. Enrollment Doublea Where financial insolvency once nibbled at USD's door (the university ran a deficit of about $1.5 million in 1972) it moved into the black five years ago. At the end of the last fis- cat year. USO had a $132,000 surplus in an operating budget of $21.5 million. The once separate colleges for men and women, perched on a picturesque mesa over- looking Mission Bay, have merged into a coeducational institution with a College of Arts and Science and four professional graduate schools - three of them added m the past dec- ade. They include the School of Law, founded in 1954, and graduate schools in business administration, education and nursing. u o ·.He didn't t et the world on fir m col-

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JOH>, McOOSOl GH Los Angeles Times Author f. Hughes and his wife, Marjort stand in front of a tapestry in their home.

Sister Sally Furay, USO