Dean Sweeney to Retire from the Dean’s Position

At the May 16 Board of Trustees meeting Dean Sweeney announced her intentions to retire from the position of dean of Bloy House this summer. Following her month of vacation in July, Dean Sweeney will formally retire as dean of the seminary on August 1. As the seminary starts its next chapter in Glendale, this seemed to her an opportune time for a leadership change within the seminary as well. Bloy House needs a dean with lots of energy and creativity, someone who can lead the seminary into the ever-growing complexities of life and ministry in the twenty-first century. Someone who can better equip the school to serve students through a combination of in class and distance learning modes.

After thirty-five years of ordained ministry and eleven years as dean, the dean looks forward to a new season when she can do further reading and research in her field, spend more time writing, and give more attention to rebuilding the content of her classes to better reflect the new questions and new learnings regarding liturgy and homiletics being garnered in this post Covid-19 age. The question being asked by all scholars in her field is, “What will liturgy and preaching look like in an era when online worship is going to be a fundamental piece of our ministry portfolio?” The dean is looking forward to having time to consider, write, and teach about this question. While she is resigning from the position of dean, she will be continuing as a professor at Bloy House.

The board of trustees has formed a search committee and is already beginning the work to discern an interim dean to lead the school through this academic year. As the country begins to recover from Covid-19, there will be a better opportunity to once again move forward with the plans and dreams for Bloy House that have largely been put on hold by the pandemic, and the hope is to have the new permanent dean in place before fall of 2021.