At the close of the 2007-2008 academic year, Georgetown College’s Jane McAuliffe will be leaving her post as dean to fill her new position as Bryn Mawr College’s eighth president.

cAuliffe has been instrumental in enhancing intellectual life on campus. Where many felt that faculty-student relations had become somewhat strained over the years, McAuliffe seems to have been one of the few Georgetown administrators who understood the importance of a sincere relationship with students. She has implemented programs that brought the two closer together. In particular, her work in creating the freshman Ignatius Seminars, as well as her success in fortifying the freshman advising process has demonstrated her contributions to ensuring that students have an opportunity to get involved in the heart of the campus and Georgetown life.

It is rather sad that we must cite McAuliffe as a remarkable aberration of what should be a norm. Other administrators should take a page from McAuliffe’s book. Her example demonstrates how much more effective administrators can be in serving students if they actually know them. It is sad to think that so few others realize what seems like such an obvious fact.

In addition to attempting to restore the bonds between students and their professors and advisers in an on-campus setting, McAuliffe has carried this philosophy off-campus. McAuliffe routinely invited groups of students into her home for dinner. This one administrator has defied the paradigm of distant, unapproachable administrators who represent the bloc of Georgetown. With her departure, we fear that the administration will sink deeper into the depths of the ICC. We can only hope that another Georgetown administrator will step forward to shed some light.

The Georgetown community will miss McAuliffe, whose work in strengthening the university both as an intellectual space and as a community has played an intrinsic role in the enhancement of student life during her 10 years at Georgetown. We congratulate her both for her work as a Georgetown administrator and for her prestigious appointment at Bryn Mawr College. We are only sorry that Georgetown students will be missing such a progressive and helpful administrator.

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