News

Pioneering Mercy Sister receives top honour from ACU, tells teachers to remain courageous

A Queensland-born Sister of Mercy who played a key role in gaining Commonwealth approval for the inclusion of a Brisbane campus in Australia's first national Catholic University has been recognized with an honorary doctorate. 

• Australian Catholic University has conferred an honorary doctorate on Sr Patricia Nolan RSM OAM
• The Brisbane-based Sister of Mercy was instrumental in preparing for the establishment of the Brisbane Campus of ACU
• Sr Nolan is the former principal of McAuley College, a teacher training college for the Sisters of Mercy and members of other Religious Congregations. McAuley College eventually became the Brisbane Campus of ACU

A Queensland-born Sister of Mercy who played a key role in gaining Commonwealth approval for the inclusion of a Brisbane campus in Australia's first national Catholic University has been recognized with an honorary doctorate. 

Sr Patricia Nolan RSM OAM of the Sisters of Mercy Brisbane accepted the award of Doctorate of the University from Australian Catholic University at a private ceremony on Wednesday 17 June. 

The honorary degree acknowledges Sr Nolan's contribution to Catholic education across the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors, and particularly her role in the preparation for the setting up of the Brisbane Campus of Australian Catholic University. 

Sr Nolan said she was initially surprised to be offered the honorary degree. 

"Surprise, at first, followed by recognition of the grace and warmth with which the offer had been made," Sr Nolan said. 

"It also brought to me a sense of closure and of great gratitude for the collegial verve and energy of the academic community." 

When the then Commonwealth Minister for Education, John Bannon, announced that the structure of tertiary education in Australia would be changed from a College of Advanced Education structure to a university structure, the Principals of the Catholic Colleges of Tertiary Education in Sydney, Melbourne, Ballarat, Brisbane and the ACT worked together to prepare a proposal for a national Catholic University.

Together with their governing bodies, they also prepared their campuses for the change in status. 

McAuley College, the Brisbane college, was established by the Sisters of Mercy Brisbane Congregation in 1957 for the purpose of training their own Sisters and members of other Religious Congregations for the teaching profession. Lay men and women were admitted to the College as students from 1973. 

Sr Nolan was appointed to the staff of the College in 1975 and the next year the College passed from the control of the Sisters of Mercy to Queensland Catholic Education.

In 1977, Sr Nolan was appointed Principal and found herself in a challenging position. A Bill was before the Commonwealth Government requiring the closure of several non-government teachers’ colleges, including McAuley College, and there was a need to gain accreditation of the existing course. 

During her tenure, Sr Nolan worked with her staff to meet new standards for the accreditation of programs in primary and secondary teacher education, upgrading for teachers who did not have three years of preparation for teaching, the establishment of a Department of External Studies to support applicants from regional Queensland, and a Graduate Diploma in Religious Education.

The College also secured accreditation for nurse education and prepared the groundwork for a support unit for Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students which eventually became Weemala.

"I regard the people who worked in the College during the time I was there as courageous," Sr Nolan said. 

"Many, many good people have been involved, one way and another, in bringing to fruition the Queensland Campus of Australian Catholic University." 

A former teacher with the Queensland Department of Education, Sr Nolan said that she had wanted to be an educator since her teenage years. 

She spent five-and-a half years teaching, before deciding to seek admission to the Sisters of Mercy, attracted by the Sisters she knew, though knowing only a little about their Foundress, Catherine McAuley. 

"Time-wise, we are in the late 1950's - travel was difficult and expensive, opportunities were limited and the Western World was just on the brink of breaking out of the trauma, loss, disjunction and severe disruption imposed by World War II and its aftermath, which was followed closely by the Korean War," Sr Nolan recalled. 

"I remember standing on the corner of Ruthven and Margaret Streets in Toowoomba on the Saturday morning before I entered the convent and thinking, ‘I can sense immense change coming and I'll be in the novitiate where I will not experience it all’." 

Sr Nolan said she was inspired by Catherine McAuley's well-informed interest in theories of teacher education.

"It is this aspect of Catherine that I personally found most stimulating and one that, from this distance in time, may be the most difficult to document,” she said. 

Now retired from teaching, Sr Nolan said she had enormous respect for modern-day educators. 

“I have only respect for them in times when I am retired from active work and they are dealing with issues the like of which we have never encountered in education in previous ages,” Sr Nolan said.

“Teachers in schools encounter all the children of all the people, by and large.

“I would not dare to offer them advice, except to say: Take care. Do not burn yourselves out. Never lose courage. Your country needs you. Never give up the search for new theories and ideas.”