Be Part of this Incredible Time at Siena Heights!

The night before I planned to write this column, I came home to my New York City apartment and found a card in the mail from SHU English professor Sr. Pat Schnapp, reflecting on what it meant to her to become an Honorary Alumna of Siena Heights at last year’s Homecoming.

Nothing in recent memory has brought such a smile to my face. How appropriate it was—since I was already planning to write about Siena’s effect on me over the past 13 years—to find this card from a long-time faculty member and recent alumni award winner in my mail.

It says so much about the Siena community that, almost 10 years after my graduation, I received a letter from Sister Pat. And that I had dinner recently with Doug Miller ‘74, another recent alumni award winner and chair of the theatre department, while he was in New York. And that, for the past few years I have had a constant online Scrabble game going with my acting mentor, professor and friend Mark DiPietro ’83.

In New York, I meet many people who have had great training in whatever they studied; but when I tell them about my experience at Siena, they grow jealous. Siena Heights is unique in the sense of community it provides, even long after graduation. Years, or decades, after you walked across the commencement stage, you still have a home at Siena. Even if the faces in the halls have changed, you can always stop in or pick up the phone and find someone ready to welcome you with open arms. No matter when you enter Siena, you will, for life, be a member of the community.

In May, I spoke to one of the largest grad-uating classes Siena has ever seen. I quoted, as I have before in this magazine, the words to our Alma Mater. Siena choirs—under the current direction of Dr. Beth Tibbs, and the decades of direction of Sue Matych-Hager ’68, and the direction of Sr. Maura Phillips ‘39 before that—have sung about our “long laughter-studded hours, with classmates fond and true.” Each time I hear or sing those words, memories come flooding back for me, as I’m sure they do for many other alumni.

I have been lucky: Through my role on the Alumni Association Board of Directors, I have never been away from the love and support of the Siena community. If you had told me when I first walked onto campus in 2001 to register for classes that a decade later I’d be president of the Alumni Association and writing this article, I probably would have laughed at you. Just one or two years into my Siena experience, though, I would have said it made perfect sense.

As I prepare to turn the reins of the Alumni Association over to my dear friend and colleague Mary Small Poore ’76 at Homecoming, I know that I leave you a stronger Alumni Board than the one I joined right after graduation. As a group, we have been on a drive for the past few years to engage our current students and alumni in a stronger way. I am eager to see where Mary and future leaders will take us all. Because whether or not we realized it when we crossed the stage to receive our degrees, we are all lifetime members of an exclusive club: The Siena Heights University Alumni Association.

Thank you for trusting in me as your president for the past two years. I look forward to seeing you at Homecoming on October 4-6—and at many Homecomings in the future.

Hail Siena and go Saints!

Michael Kirk Lane ’05
President, Alumni Association Board of Directors
mlane1@sienaheights.edu