Catholic University President
Always interested in helping people in different situations ranging from students to victims of crime, she pursued several career paths while gaining experience to earn promotion to leadership positions.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Tania Tetlow (TT) was born in the Bronx section of New York City to parents who met in that city based Fordham University while her eventual father was a graduate student and Jesuit priest. His duties included presiding over Mass while her eventual mother, also a graduate student at Fordham, sang in the university choir. Their love could not be denied so soon her father left the priesthood to marry her mother and within a couple of years, TT was born.
CHILDHOOD
When TT was a toddler, the family left the Bronx for New Orleans, Louisiana. Her mother earned a law degree from Loyola University, a private Jesuit university in New Orleans. Eventually her mother earned five postgraduate degrees. Her father worked as a psychologist and a professor, also counseling prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Although her father chose family over clergy, he always held fast to Jesuit values, recalled TT, passing them down to TT and her two sisters. She remembers a sign on her father’s desk that encapsulated the Jesuit approach to academic inquiry: “Question authority, but politely and with respect.”
EDUCATION
Following her years at a parochial (Catholic) grammar school and public high school, TT attended Tulane University, a non-religious affiliated, private school in New Orleans, where she was a dedicated student earning admission to Harvard Law School.
FIRST CAREER PATH – LAW
Although her parents never suggested to TT that she pursue a career in the legal field, she absorbed their interests in the law as a profession dealing with people in difficult situations, especially within criminal law. After briefly entering private legal practice, TT spent five years as a federal prosecutor, staring down murderers, drug dealers and arsonists, “Law & Order” style.
“The arson cases always involved a planning meeting at a Waffle House,” TT recalled with wry amusement. She joked that “You haven’t cracked the case until you found the Waffle House meeting.”
(Editor’s note – maintaining a sense of humor while engaged in any pressure- packed work is one way of coping with career challenges.)
TT gained the respect and admiration of many of her colleagues in law enforcement, like a former FBI agent and now a chief deputy in a Sheriff’s office in Louisiana, who said, “Her mind-set is much more liberal than mine, but she put the bad guys behind bars. Her big thing was, she didn’t want (anyone) to be a victim. When you’ve got a gang tearing up a neighborhood and everyone hiding under their beds because they’ve got bullets flying through the wall, she was all about taking the bad guys down.”
But TT also strove to empathize with the defendants, to “walk in their shoes,” as she put it. Among the dramatic convictions she helped secure involving wiretaps and surveillance, there was also the seemingly simple case of a man who confessed to felony gun possession. He was almost certainly headed to prison. But a casual remark from an investigator raised doubts for TT as the prosecutor, who notified her boss and the defendant’s lawyer about her concerns involving the defendant’s potential innocence. The defendant, who had been facing a minimum 10-year sentence, turned out to be innocent after TT’s continued review of all the evidence, some of which favored the prosecution, some favoring the defendant.
“That’s the case I’m most proud of,” said TT. It also gave her pause. She told herself that if it became too easy and comfortable to put people away in prison, she would leave the job. And so, she did.
SECOND CAREER PATH – TEACHING
TT’s next career interest was more like changing lanes on the same path than exiting the highway: she began teaching law at the Tulane Law School.
THIRD CAREER PATH – EDUCATION ADMINISTRATION
Her next career change was also a slight veer: moving to the administrative side of education as Chief of Staff to Tulane’s president.
Three years later, TT was hired as president of Loyola University in New Orleans (Editor: there are several “Loyola” universities in other states). As President, TT was tasked with guiding the university through a crippling budgetary crisis. Loyola was in too much financial distress at the time to worry about breaking barriers by appointing someone to head a Jesuit school who had never been ordained as a priest. That TT was a laywoman leading a Jesuit school and a faculty of priests was not a paramount issue.
“Our future was very unclear at the time, and she led the turnaround,” said the Chairman of Loyola’s board of trustees. “Now Loyola New Orleans is thriving as a liberal arts institution, and I don’t think that would have been possible without her.”
At Tulane and Loyola, TT learned the details of running a university – and burnished her credentials as the leading candidate to replace Father McShane at Fordham University in New York City. He was an admired priest whose 19-year tenure had just come to an end. The board of trustees was looking for a leader who would remain true to the Jesuit mission while introducing fresh energy and ideas. Ready for a change, the board chose not only the first woman to lead Fordham in its now 182-year history; TT is also the first president who isn’t a priest.
TT has built a presence on campus in her first 18 months on the job, presiding over board meetings, greeting students and singing in the university choir, as her mother did. She even sang the national anthem before a Yankees game last season. She has become a fixture at the men’s basketball games, regularly dancing with the Fordham Ram mascot. She has also stressed the importance of Fordham students engaging with the Bronx community outside the confines of the campus, as her parents did as Fordham students decades ago.
CHALLENGES
Despite her positive start as university leader, TT has nonetheless had to deal with criticism as president.
Her announcement to raise tuition by 6 percent last year provoked an outcry among students, while she faced frustrated staff members who wanted more pay. Some wonder why her salary seems to be a secret; she declined to divulge how much she is paid, and the board is not required to disclose it.
(Editor’s note: Colleges and universities which receive government (i.e. ‘public’) funding are required to disclose administrative salaries. For example, Penn State University. It would be interesting to know the reasons why TT and Fordham decline to disclose their president’s salary; if the concern is that the compensation would appear too generous, consider comparing the level of responsibilities to similar compensation levels within private industry. But understand that any disclosure will yield criticism and a leader must be ready, as Sir Winston Churchill famously advised, to “Keep calm and carry on.”)
CAREER SATISFACTION
A recent editor of the Fordham campus newspaper said, “When TT took over there was a lot of excitement. That may have been later tempered a bit because any university president is going to face tough issues. But overall, the perception of her on campus is quite positive. Most students think she has handled things well.”
It is still early in TT’s tenure, and many will judge her not just by how she is regarded by students but by her ability to raise money, as compared with her ordained predecessors. But following a nearly two-century legacy of priests does not worry TT. Her earlier success at Loyola suggests that if anything, it may be less jarring for a woman to succeed a priest than to break into a long line of male former C.E.O.s, who tend to dominate the top jobs at American universities.
“The priest as president is a model rooted in humility, not swagger,” says TT. “When women try to swagger, we often get punished for it. And, frankly, it’s not how I roll.”
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This career story is based on a news article written by David Waldstein, published by The New York Times on January 28, 2024, plus internet research.
