Scaperlanda to be inaugurated as 16th President of St. Gregory’s University
Michael Scaperlanda, J.D., will be sworn in as the sixteenth president of St. Gregory’s University on Tuesday, March 21, 2017. The Inauguration ceremony will begin at 3 p.m. in the Don and Jenetta Sumner Field House, and will include a formal procession of trustees, distinguished guests, and faculty and staff, with a reception following the ceremony. The public is invited to attend the ceremony and reception. Mass will be in the Abbey Church that morning at 11 a.m. and all are welcome.
Archbishop Coakley said that “President Scaperlanda has accomplished much since taking office on May 16, 2016. He has built a strong Board of Directors, assembled an excellent executive team, created greater efficiency and accountability within the university, and increased enrollment. Most importantly, he has secured a path for the university’s growth, which will provide generations of students with the intellectual, moral and spiritual formation crucial to living joy-filled lives oriented toward the common good.”
Guests are asked to RSVP online at www.stgregorys.edu/inauguration for all inauguration events by Tuesday, March 7. For more information, please contact Sarah Schimpf at [email protected] or (405) 878-5351.
The Leisure and Labor Conference
An academic conference, Leisure and Labor: The Liberal Arts and the Professions, will serve as a pre-inauguration event beginning Monday, March 20 through Tuesday, March 21 at St. Gregory’s University. Rev. James V. Schall, S.J., a world renowned teacher, writer and philosopher, will serve as the conference keynote speaker. The conference is open to the public for a $50.00 registration fee. For those only able to attend Fr. Schall’s keynote and reception afterward, the registration fee is $15.
“We are humbled to have Rev. Schall serve as our keynote speaker for the Leisure and Labor conference. His breadth of knowledge will truly awaken the minds of all those in attendance,” said Richard Meloche, PhD., Vice President of Academic Affairs.
Rev. Schall has written over 30 books, including: Another Sort of Learning (1988), Liberal Learning (2000), The Life of the Mind (2006), The Classical Movement (2014), and his latest Docilitas: On Teaching and Being Taught (2016). Schall holds a B.A. from Santa Clara University, a M.A. in philosophy from Gonzaga University, and a Ph.D in political theory from Georgetown University.
The Leisure and Labor conference will focus on the overwhelming trend of secularization in American Catholic higher education which has led to colleges and universities largely abandoning their liberal arts heritage for a more ‘instrumentalist’ approach to education. The conference seeks to explore both the theoretical and practical causes, effects, and possible solutions to this educational identity crisis. The conference will include a panel presentation with esteemed academic and workforce professionals and peer-reviewed paper presentations.
To register for the Leisure and Labor conference, please visit www.stgregorys.edu/conference. For more information, please contact Sarah Schimpf at [email protected] or (405) 878-5351.
A graduate from the University of Texas School of Law, Scaperlanda clerked for the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. He also practiced law in Washington, D.C. and Austin, Texas. After leaving law practice in 1989, he served the University of Oklahoma in many academic and administrative capacities. He held the Gene and Elaine Edwards Family Chair in Law and also was a Professor of Law at OU.
Scaperlanda is a nationally known scholar in Immigration Law and in Catholic Legal Theory. His books include Immigration Law: A Primer and Recovering Self-Evident Truths: Catholic Perspectives on American Law. He also co-authored The Journey: A Guide for the Modern Pilgrim with his wife, award winning author, María Ruiz Scaperlanda.
Scaperlanda serves as a Scholar Participant in the Fr. Stanley Rother Hispanic Cultural Institute of Oklahoma City and Norman. He is a past member of the Oklahoma Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Legal Ethics Committee. He also teaches in OU’s Visions of America Summer Institute for high school teachers as well as OU’s Warrior-Scholar Project for veterans enrolling in college.
He and his wife, María, have four children and eight grandchildren. They are members of St. Mark the Evangelist Parish in Norman, Okla.
