"Why Marymount ?" - Direct From Our Staff And Faculty

“Why your school” is a fantastic question, and one you should really ask in regards to any college you are considering. Why should I attend? Why is this institution in particular a shining beacon of academic excellence in the vast, murky ocean of educational mediocrity? 

You probably don’t have to ask it like that (though if you do, I will be delighted), but, like buying a car, you don’t want to get stuck with a lemon just because you didn't ask.

It’s our job to answer that question, and we answer it a lot. Every admission page, blog, brochure, pitch, tour, and video will have a section devoted to answering “Why” (usually, in a fit of originality, called “Why [insert school here]?”). We’re kind of obsessed with it. Toward the end of the recruitment season you’ll find us randomly bringing up school facts in polite conversation (“Yes, I’ll have the rib eye, medium-rare, and did you know we have the highest transfer acceptance rate in the western United States?”), shouting numerical statistics at joggers through our car windows, and muttering our list of majors in our sleep. We’re popular at dinner parties.

You can find our official answers to the “Big Question” on our website [also here and here]. They’ve been perfected over more than a half-century, and, as such, don’t really need to be re-typed on a blog. However, in an attempt to offer something new and unofficial (and get away from the tour script that is on auto-repeat in my head), we posed this very loaded question to our faculty and staff to get their honest reactions. There is a reason that we choose to work at Marymount (and it's not California’s staggeringly high unemployment rate)—we love this school. Hopefully offering a candid view of what makes this college special to us will help to answer your own "Why Marymount" question. At the very least it will be more entertaining than reading another list of admission statistics.

So, without further ado, here is what our staff and faculty had to say:

“I have been at MCPV for 26 years, and have seen it grow over that time. From my experience, one thread is weaved through all my time here:

Marymount is a special place because it is one of the few places in the academic universe where every employee of the College not only cares about where you are NOW, but wants to know where you came from, and how we can help you get to where you want to go."

-Dr. Ken Zanca, Faculty

“I'm constantly amazed by what happens to students here. There are so many reasons that they choose Marymount, but whatever the reason, through all of our support and services they become something more. Whether it's a student who never could have imagined continuing their education at Cornell, or earning an advanced degree at Berkeley, or starting a career in the film industry--they are able to accomplish those goals because they chose Marymount.”

-Paula Avery, Admissions

“I came here from USC, via the RAND Corporation (both great places to work), and noticed immediately that Marymount has something you can’t institutionalize—a unique sense of place and a genuine feeling of community. I suppose the best way I have to express “Why Marymount” is through “snapshots” that impressed me during my first weeks here:

• I see a student sitting on the bench in front of the Chapel Circle softly plucking a guitar, his curly head bent over the instrument, intent on the music.
• I pass a diverse group gathered in front of the Marymount shuttle laughing and talking: two students, a professor, a Sister from Vietnam and a security guard.
• I hear lovely music coming from the Chapel and open the door to find President Brophy and a student at the piano.
• I walk by a classroom and peek in to see a lively discussion taking place back and forth between students and their smiling professor.”

-Karen Holden, Institutional Advancement

“Last week I was Skyping into a DC conference on alternative development in India.  They loved my PowerPoint presentation, but they wanted a video of me  actually presenting it to put on their web site.  So I go to Max, a media arts student I know from the Green Student Initiative Club, and he says he can video it, edit in the PP and then we can email it to their web site.  While we are filming we start brainstorming about making lectures like this as on-line add-ons to classes or other events at Marymount, and that we could use this first one as a model/sample.  I am now waiting for the edited product, confident we will have a high quality result to promote my work, Marymount, and explore distance-learning resources.  My student feels like a partner in this on-going effort, because he is.”

-Duncan Earle, Faculty

“It’s a college with a HEART!”

 -Dina Dini, Institutional Advancement 

“One of the benefits to working at Marymount is that I get to watch new students transform during the time span when they enter as freshmen up until they become sophomores or juniors. It’s fun to see how much they grow more into their own; becoming more vocal and confident. Marymount nurtures and encourages this by giving students the ability to express themselves and the opportunity for their ideas to leave a mark on the College.”

-Joanne Carbone, Business Office

“I love to work at Marymount because the view from campus makes it look like the ocean blends with the sky! ”

-Erin Martinez, Residential Life

“Everyone will probably say “Oooh, the view is awesome” [and it is] but there’s an internal view that all are valued and that is one of the biggest and best reasons I have for “Why Marymount?”

 -Marcia Watanabe, Institutional Advancement

 “Marymount is, to me, like the good parts of cookie dough ice cream. When I first attended Marymount, I was a pretty good student (vanilla ice cream). My two years at the college (morsels of delectable cookie dough and semi-sweet chocolate flakes, respectively) pushed me far past what I had always thought was my full academic potential, and allowed me to be competitive (delicious?) on a whole new level. Marymount transformed me into a great student, in a way no other school could have.”

-T.J. Lowther, Admissions


“From a Residential Life standpoint, I had a funny interaction with a student a few weeks ago.  I was showing him an apartment at West (which he eventually moved into).  When I asked him what his impression of the apartment was his response was:  “It’s divine!  I can’t believe college students get to live in this nice of a place!”

-Jenifer Novotny, Residential Life

“I love knowing students’ names and most especially I love seeing how much it means to students that we actually know their names, even years after they’ve left us.”

-Lynn Elliott, Registrar

 “Because, I can walk into any office on this campus and know that there is someone there who will support me…family.”

-Patrick Webster, Faculty

“Marymount has made me a better Instructor by instilling the value of student-focused teaching. The expectation is for the instructor to go the extra mile to support our students' learning and overall college success. This translates to how I view my role as an instructor and has changed the way I approach teaching. I feel highly connected to the College and to my students. The sense of 'community' is very strong.”

-Alicia Goldner-Sichan, Faculty

“Marymount is like Cheers. Not saying it is a bar, but it’s 'a place where everybody knows your name.' You become a member of a community, not just a 'student,' so there is a real sense of 'We.'"

 -Matthew Broderick, Campus Safety

“You may have heard this quote: ‘They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.’ This is what I’ve learned from our students. We get to help them make informed decisions and flourish. What a blessing!”

-Colleen Ecker, Counseling Services

“It is summed up for me in our old motto: ‘Think big, start small.’ You can have all of these dreams, and Marymount is the first step along your journey to get there—and the foundation that allows you to actually be successful on that journey.”

 -Christine Wade, Admissions