Photography by Michelle Peltier, courtesy of Saint Louis University
If there was one thing that Saint Louis University’s lay faculty made clear when the Rev. Lawrence Biondi stepped down last September, it was that they wanted their next president to be a Jesuit. They didn’t need him to marry or bury or hear their confessions. But they wanted to make sure he’d been shaped by the order’s philosophy and could articulate the ideals to which they’d dedicated their lives.
With a blare of trumpets, a formal search began. Seven months later, the choice was announced: Fred Pestello, a layman with a wife and two grown children.
OK then. The faculty members of SLU reached for their specs and examined his lengthy CV. A sociologist, he described himself as a social constructionist—so he believed people’s actions were shaped by the way they defined their reality. And just how did he define Jesuit education?
Pestello arrived in July, met his potential detractors with easy warmth and a strong handshake, and asked them to call him Fred. Then he started talking about a Jesuit university’s higher purpose, its emphasis on ethics and integrity, its reliance on community, its mission in the world. He said he was honored to be part of that effort. He called it noble.
The skeptics smiled. They just might have their Jesuit after all.
Was there some initial resentment when you showed up without a clerical collar?
I have not felt it. That’s not to say that some people don’t feel that way. What I can tell you quite honestly is, we have been so warmly, enthusiastically, and genuinely welcomed that it’s been touching. I think most of what people are hungering for is to get a focus and move forward.
Still, it’s got to be hard to be the first lay president in 196 years.
This is not the first time I’ve been in that position! I’m now the first layperson to have been the first lay leader of a Jesuit school twice. When I became president of Le Moyne College in 2008, I was the third lay president of the 28 Jesuit schools; there are now nine.
In what ways do you feel like a Jesuit, minus the vows?
I feel a great debt to the Jesuits for my own education, and I’ve spent my entire working career in Catholic education. The order has a very powerful charism, which has worked very successfully in higher ed. It did not start out as a teaching order, but very quickly became one. The emphasis is on rigorous, challenging academics—recognition that the mind is a gift from God, coupled with a deep sense of justice and purpose. I love the tag line of Saint Louis University: “Higher purpose. Greater good.”
How familiar were you with SLU when the job opening was announced?
I’ve followed Saint Louis University pretty closely since I moved into senior administration at the University of Dayton. It’s been an incredibly impressive trajectory. Father Biondi is well-known for the transformation of this campus. He did a spectacular job. In addition to that, it’s known to be among the top Catholic universities. It has the fourth-largest endowment. It grants more doctoral degrees than any other Jesuit university and the second-largest number of professional degrees among Jesuit research universities. So it’s a powerhouse.
You’ve said you want SLU to play a more prominent role nationally. How do you get there?
We’re already there on virtually every measure I see. What we’re looking at now is marketing and branding. I think the university’s been a little bit too reserved and modest, as I think this community is. There’s a humbleness—it may be a Midwestern thing. On the East Coast, we were a little less reserved in touting ourselves.
Ah, but now you’re a St. Louisan. Where did you and your wife decide to live?
In the Central West End. It’s like being in Europe—the pubs, the restaurants. We are in walking distance to Euclid Avenue. I like everything from a greasy diner to fine dining. I love food. I love pubs. I’ve been to Llywelyn’s and another one around the corner.
What’s your take on the new pope, and how will he change the church?
I love the man…and he is a Jesuit, as you know, and that was wonderful to hear—his taking the name of St. Francis, I don’t think was something he did lightly. He’s brought us back to a focus on Christ’s message: love and compassion. He’s brought us back to a focus on our common humanity.
Will his papacy affect Catholic education?
Yeah, I believe it will. It spills into parishes—I noticed in my home parish that the homilies started to change. It spills over into higher education, particularly Jesuit higher education. We’re very excited and further inspired by our mission.
At least six current university presidents are sociologists. Does the field somehow prep you for the role?
I think it’s wonderful preparation to understand groups and their functioning, as well as social problems within the community. There are probably any number of fields that help you in such a role, but sociology has, I believe, given me a little bit deeper understanding and thoughtfulness about organizations and the individuals within them.
What kind of sociologist are you? I assume there are flavors.
I’m a sociological social psychologist, specifically a symbolic interactionist or social constructionist. [He says it in a rush, then has the grace to laugh and repeat it.] That’s probably the first lens through which I see the world, although I try others. The way we act is based upon the way we define things. We each construct our reality.
Was sociology an early passion?
Not at all. I started as a chemistry major. I had to take some humanities and social sciences. I took a sociology course—I didn’t even know what sociology was—and I was fascinated with the subject matter. I thought the methodology was sloppy, compared to what I was used to. I took a second course on inequality and race and issues of gender—it was a turbulent time in the country—and decided to switch my major. In my junior year, I actually thought about switching to philosophy. And then my senior year, I became interested in communication.
What was your first job?
I worked in radio for two years. I did everything: on-air news and talk, engineering, sales. After that, I considered graduate education in philosophy, in sociology, or in law. I decided on sociology, got my master’s, and then thought, “What do I do now?” It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I decided I really, really wanted to be a faculty member. So I very much sympathize with young people who are uncertain about their course at 18, 19, 20. Many of them feel enormous pressure to know exactly what they want to do. But I had never even been exposed to sociology, and it captured my heart as well as my head. That’s part of what college is about.
What do you wish happened before kids reached their freshman year?
As a faculty member, I’d always wished they would be, on the whole, just a little bit more serious about academics and just a little bit better prepared. But there’s a real joy in watching those young men and women go from being relatively raw and awkward to substantially more knowledgeable and polished.
How is technology changing education?
Before, you had to go to the library; now, you just type in a search term. So it’s incumbent upon us to educate people in what is or is not an authoritative source. What is the quality of the information? How do you filter and synthesize information? I wonder whether—and I can’t present data on this—young people today lack the ability to really deeply struggle with a text, to put the energy forward to grapple with difficult material in a way that can lead to learning and deep satisfaction. Now, that’s maybe a stereotype, but when I was an undergraduate—I feel like a dinosaur!—we were assigned some very complex and not easily accessible material that required considerable struggle. I’m wondering whether that has been lost, and what is the cost.
How do you defend the liberal arts when people say they’re a waste of time because they won’t get you a job?
First, with regard to jobs: People who are leading corporations want people who can read with comprehension, who can write with clarity, who can speak and present an argument with authority, who have an understanding of quantitative analysis so they know how to mine data, who have an understanding of the world’s cultures, who understand the scientific method. People who, if they need to go out and master something new, know how to do it. The jobs of the future, many of them haven’t even been created yet.
And second?
The humanities grapple with those big questions: What is my purpose? What should I do? Why am I here? Who created all this? What is the divine? What is my relationship with the divine? What is the relationship between faith and reason? Those are the deepest and most meaningful questions that make us grow. To discourage peo-ple from grappling with them is an incredible disservice.
What have you learned about human nature?
I’ll tell you a powerful lesson. As a sociologist, you don’t give much thought to the biological side, the nature side. But then I had kids, and right out of the gate, each of my kids—different. It’s forced me to realize that maybe biology has something to do with this. Things typically aren’t black and white; there’s a lot of gray. How you function within that more ambiguous realm is where leadership is developed. It’s where we all come to maturity.
What’s your take on online degrees and those massive open online courses? The MOOCs? That was such a rage, and now there are lots of questions about it. I don’t see Saint Louis University supplanting face-to-face education with an electronically mediated classroom. That human contact is important to what we do, particularly on the undergraduate level. Alums talk about faculty giving them phone numbers, inviting them to their homes. Having a mentor, having a person talk about their own intellectual formation, seeing a professor grapple with a question—that’s powerful and important. That relationship, which goes back thousands and thousands of years, to encounter that as an 18-year-old was, for me, a life-changing experience.
What are your impressions of SLU so far?
I’m taken with the dedication and competence. People love this place. And they are so good. Mary Bruemmer, who is now 94 years old, who’s been here since 1938, who was path breaking for a woman in higher education, who still comes to the office upstairs as a volunteer. The Center for World Health & Medicine, where we have scientists working on diseases that take the greatest toll on children in Third World countries—diseases that aren’t necessarily profitable to explore, but which we’re dedicated to curing. Medical students who are washing and treating the feet of the homeless. The way they approach learning, it comes out of the Jesuit emphasis on social justice. It’s noble.
