Greetings from the Director of the Gannon Center:
Gabrielle M. Buckley 

Welcome! We’re so glad to have our Gannon Scholars back on campus this New Year. The campus is in full swing, with students, faculty, and staff here and available to all of our students.

Our Gannon Scholars’ interests and curricula are so wide and varied! They have declared over 20 different majors, ranging from Anthropology to Women’s Studies. Our Gannon Scholars are excited to be back with their friends and fellow students after the holiday break. 

We are beginning another momentous year, with the continuing pandemic, travel disruptions, elections, climate issues, world conflicts, and incivility in the news every day. Our Gannon Scholars will continue to face all of these issues this year, and will also continue to work towards a more just social order through Gannon, in their classes, in their volunteer work, and in the community.

As many of you know, the Center includes our four-year Gannon Scholars Program, Faculty Research Fellowships for Loyola faculty, the Carolyn Farrell Professorship, resources for visiting scholars, mentoring programs for undergraduate students, and research grants for students as well. Our newest Faculty Fellows are beginning their terms this month, and we look forward to working with them with regard to their research and contributions to the Gannon Center. 

The Gannon Center also includes the Women and Leadership Archives (WLA), which focuses on the records of women leaders, including those affiliated with the Gannon Center’s predecessor, Mundelein College. Work is underway on the Mundelein at 90 project funded by the Illinois History Digital Imaging Grant. The Mundelein at 90 digitization project aims to digitize and provide online access to unique historical records from Mundelein College through the Illinois Digital Archives.

We are gearing up to select our new students for next academic year’s Gannon Scholars Program. The Program is held in such high regard that over 900 applicants generally apply for our ten Gannon Scholar openings. Although we would love to increase the number of Gannon Scholars we can accept, our current goal is to increase the amount of scholarship funds we provide to equal 50% of their tuition needs first.

The diverse array of Gannon Center scholarships, research, and programming is made possible by the loyalty of Mundelein, Loyola, and Gannon alumni and friends, whose generous gifts established and continue to add to the Center's endowment fund for scholarships. We welcome your suggestions and questions and look forward to your support as we strengthen and expand the Gannon Center’s capabilities and outreach. Together we will move forward through these interesting times and continue to prepare women to lead extraordinary lives!

Gabrielle M. Buckley

Director, Gannon Center for Women and Leadership

“Love is shown more in deeds than in words.” ― Ignatius of Loyola

• Biography