The â??Official Portal for the North Dakota State Governmentâ? lists that commonwealthâ??s nicknames as the Peace Garden State, the Flickertail State (something to do with squirrels, evidently), and the Roughrider State. Most Americans know todayâ??s North Dakota as the Fracking State, where fortunes are being made in the energy industry. Catholics in the United States may soon know North Dakota as the cutting edge of Catholic higher education reform.
Thatâ??s because Msgr. Jim Shea and the people of the University of Mary, founded in Bismarck in 1959 by the Benedictine Sisters of the Annunciation, are dreaming no small dreams, there in the upper Midwest. Those dreams were on full display recently, when the University of Mary (home to 3,300 students from 42 states and 23 countries) hosted a conference celebrating the work of the first holder of the universityâ??s newly created John Henry Newman Chair in the Liberal Arts: Dr. Don J. Briel, who has relocated his work in Catholic university reform from the University of St. Thomas in the Twin Cities, where he built the gold standard of Catholic Studies programs over a quarter-century, to the University of Mary.
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