Elizabeth J. McCormack, a former nun who served as president of Manhattanville College from 1966 to 1974 and gained national attention for realigning the concept of Roman Catholic education, passed away on Dec. 4 at the age of 98.
Born in New York City, McCormack studied English literature and philosophy at the Purchase-based school, which was founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart ”“ the school was formally known as Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. After graduating in 1944, she joined the Society of the Sacred Heart and took teaching jobs at Catholic schools while pursuing a master”™s degree at Providence College.
McCormack returned to Manhattanville in 1958 as an assistant to its president, Mother Eleanor O”™Byrne, and was promoted to academic dean in 1962 and named the school”™s sixth president in 1966, the same year she received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Fordham University.
During her eight years as Manhattanville”™s president, she transformed the school from an all-women”™s Catholic institution into a coeducational nonsectarian institution, going as far as to removing all of the crucifixes from the campus and burying them in the woods behind the school.
“It became clear to me that it was change or go out of business, and what the change had to be was making the college available to a larger pool of students ”“ Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, male, female,” she recalled. “It was change or die.”
McCormack never accepted a salary as Manhattanville”™s president, instead turning her paychecks over to the Society of the Sacred Heart. But during her leadership years, McCormack began to question church policies on a wide range of social issues, including abortion, divorce and homosexuality.
In January 1974, she announced her decision to leave her order, stating in a public letter that “the commitment I made in 1944 can no longer be fulfilled by me within the society. The world in which we live is dynamic. It is inevitable that both institutions and individuals evolve as they are moved by the forces of life.”
McCormick resigned from the school”™s leadership position shortly after leaving her order. Two years later, she married Jerome Aron, whom she”™d hired in 1969 as the college”™s chief financial officer.
In her post-academic career, McCormack became a philanthropic adviser to the Rockefeller family and served on the board of directors of prominent foundations and nonprofits including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Atlantic Philanthropies, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Partnership for Palliative Care, where she served as the board chairwoman.
She also served on the board of trustees at Manhattanville, Hamilton College and at the Juilliard School of Music, and received honorary degrees from Julliard, Brandeis University, Princeton Univeristy, the City University of New York and the American University in Paris.
McCormack”™s life was the subject of the 2012 book “No Ordinary Life: The Biography of Elizabeth J. McCormack” by Charles C. Kenney. Looking back on her life, she told her biographer: “I think now in retrospect I didn”™t want the life that I would have had, had I not become a nun. I actually, from many points of view, had a much fuller life. I had a career. I was educated. I learned leadership. It really gave me an awful good life.”
