The Modern Course: Lay Governance, Graduate Return and the Conboy Decade

2000–November 2026

The century turns on money and mission: The modern course opens with the Eldred presidency's signature transaction: a twelve-million-dollar Lilly Endowment grant in 2000, in the fact book's chronology, supporting the Center for Women's Intercultural Leadership — an early statement of the form modern Saint Mary's growth would take, programme centres funded by targeted philanthropy rather than by enrolment alone. Those programmes are the era's structural fact. Saint Mary's had offered no graduate degrees since the theology school's era ended (the speech-pathology release dates the gap precisely: no master's programmes since the 1960s, no graduate programmes since 1969). In fall 2015 it returned to graduate education on entirely new ground — professional, coeducational, partly online: the Doctor of Nursing Practice, the Master of Science in Data Science (planned with a one-million-dollar Lilly Endowment grant), and the Master of Science in Speech Language Pathology, built around the Judd Leighton Speech and Language Clinic dedicated in April 2014 with a one-million-dollar Leighton Foundation grant. A Master of Autism Studies followed, begun in summer 2019 in the provost-profile account. The undergraduate college remained a women's college; the graduate school admitted men, who were not permitted to live on campus in the 2015 reporting — a boundary drawn with care, and the institutional descendant of 1971's lesson: expand everything except the undergraduate identity.

Disruption and succession, 2016–2020: The Cervelli presidency (2016–2018) ended in the resignation and litigation the base records; the Nekvasil interim (2018–2020) steadied the college and handed over, in June 2020, in the first months of a pandemic, to Katie Conboy. Its implementation, per the board's August 2026 release, includes the Avenue Experience and the PACE Center — academic roadmaps, mentoring and experiential learning in one curriculum-to-career pathway — and a new facility for nursing science and integrated healthcare education, the Regina Hall centre of the buildings article.

The identity test of 2023:In June 2023 the board of trustees approved, without public announcement, an updated policy under which applicants whose sex is female or who consistently live and identify as women would be considered for undergraduate admission. The change became public on 21 November 2023 through student-press reporting and the president's notification to campus; it drew immediate opposition from some students, alumnae and donors, and a public call from Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne–South Bend to return to the prior policy in fidelity to Catholic teaching. On 21 December 2023 the board reversed the decision and returned to the previous admission policy, in a letter over the names of President Conboy and board chair Maureen Smith (the chair's middle name appears as both Karantz and Karnatz in the reporting; the college's 2026 release gives Maureen Smith, and the variant is noted in the wave note), stating that the college had underestimated stakeholders' desire to be engaged on a policy of such significance and had unintentionally created division. Listening sessions were announced for January 2024. The episode's meaning is double: a board attempted to move a defining policy by quiet vote and discovered the limit of that method within a month; and the college stands, in the National Catholic Reporter's account, as the only Catholic women's college in its peer group not admitting transgender women. This article takes no side; it records the test, its resolution, and that enrolment and fundraising in the two years following rose rather than fell.

The present state, verified November 2026: Federal IPEDS data for 2024–25, the latest full federal year, counts 1,601 students in all — 1,505 undergraduate and 96 graduate — on a course that peaked at 1,701 in 2017, bottomed at 1,518 in 2024 on the trend summary's line (undergraduate-basis figures vary by carrier; see the wave note), and has since turned upward in the way that matters most to a tuition-dependent college: successive record intakes in fall 2025 (480 first-years) and fall 2026 (520 new students, class of 2030, the largest since the 1980s; student-life article). The endowment stood at 311.2 million dollars in fiscal 2024 in the NACUBO study the reference record cites. The Ring Out Ring True comprehensive campaign had raised more than 180 million dollars in its quiet phase by August 2026, passing its internal goal eighteen months early, and launched publicly on 6 June 2026; within it, the May 2026 Wilson Sheehan gift of 7.5 million dollars — the largest cash scholarship gift in the college's history, told in the base's gifts article — endowed need-based scholarships from 2027–28, and the college states that 100 percent of incoming students receive a scholarship or grant and that 92 percent of the class of 2025 finished in four years. The academic offer is five bachelor's degrees across more than thirty majors, and coeducational graduate study comprising the Doctor of Nursing Practice, the direct-entry Master of Science in Nursing (begun fall 2022, first in Indiana, base), and speech-language pathology, data science and autism studies lines. The presidency is settled to 2030 by contract; the founding congregation is headquartered still on the ground, its archives in the Heritage and Research Center (2023, base). Saint Mary's at November 2026 is therefore printable in one sentence without exaggeration: a small, residential, Catholic women's college of about sixteen hundred students, financially the strongest it has ever been on the figures its own board cites, growing again after a demographic dip, and still — by deliberate, recently re-litigated choice — what four sisters opened at Bertrand in 1844.

Sources:

1. Saint Mary's College Fact Book 2015–16 — the 2000 Lilly Endowment grant.
2. Saint Mary's College releases (January 2015) — Faith Always, Action Now concluded at 105 million dollars against an 80 million goal; the Judd Leighton clinic dedication (April 2014) and the 2015 graduate programmes; the "no graduate programmes since 1969" line.
3. Saint Mary's College provost search profile (2019) — the three 2015 programmes and the Master of Autism Studies from summer 2019.
4. Saint Mary's College magazine, Upon Reflection (Spring 2021) — Revere and Revise unveiled December 2020; four commitments, twenty-four recommendations; the Office for Student Equity.
5. Inside Higher Ed (21 December 2023); National Catholic Reporter (21 December 2023); Catholic Review / OSV News (22 December 2023) — the June 2023 policy, the 21 November disclosure, Bishop Rhoades's intervention, the 21 December reversal and the board's stated reasons.
6. Saint Mary's College news releases (11 May 2026; 12 August 2026; 24 August 2026) — the Wilson Sheehan scholarship gift and campaign public launch of 6 June 2026; the Conboy extension through 2030 and the 180-million quiet-phase figure; the class of 2030.
7. IPEDS 2024–25 summaries (College Tuition Compare trend file; NACUBO fiscal 2024 endowment study) — 1,601 students (1,505 undergraduate, 96 graduate); endowment 311.2 million dollars.