Barb Howard, First Woman to Serve as Chair of Xavier Board, Steps Down
Sep 25, 2019
At her final board meeting as chair, Barbara J. Howard, Esq., passed the gavel to her successor, retired St. Vincent Health Services CEO Vincent Caponi, who assumes leadership of the Xavier University Board of Trustees for the next five years. The symbolic gesture brings to a close Howard’s tenure as the first woman to ever serve as board chair, which at the time marked a milestone for the once all-male University. Moreover, her departure during the same year Xavier is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the year women were first admitted on an equal footing with men highlights the board’s historic decision in 1969 to do so.
In a recent interview, Howard reflected on her chairmanship of the board and her experience as one of the first women on campus, as well as the legacy of women at Xavier today and in the future. A member of the board since 1995, she will continue to serve on the board full-time.
MADAME CHAIRWOMAN
When she was first named chair, she said she was nervous—not because she was the first woman, but because of “these shoes” she had to fill—Mike Conaton, Joe Pichler, and Bob Kohlhepp. “They are giants,” she said of the men who had served before her. But she settled in and went to work with President Michael Graham, S.J., successfully developing and implementing the board’s transition from a listening board to a strategic board.
This resulted in cutting the number of board committees in half and re-focusing the board on the in-depth discussion of strategic issues facing the University, rather than listening to reports. The results have led to a new risk management plan that includes improved student safety, and a financial approach that helped in the development of plans for the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, the Health United Building, Xavier 5000 and a future new residence hall.
“We have been able to focus efforts on things pertaining to student safety that we would never have had the discussion about previously because the board wouldn’t have been dealing with the strategic issue of what enterprise risk management looks like and how it affects the University,” she said.
“Another is when we’re dealing with various financial issues. We get the benefit of looking at all the experience that our board members have in terms of looking at the best way to do things as we look toward XU 5000, as we look toward building a new dorm, and as we looked at the HUB. All of those things are better because we had strategic conversations about them.”
A WOMAN OF XAVIER
Howard entered Xavier in the fall of 1972, three years after the first 52 women were admitted as traditional day students. She graduated with a degree in political science and went on to a successful career as a lawyer. Looking back on her days at Xavier, she recalls how few women there were on campus at all, much less majoring in such historically male-dominated fields as political science. Most of her female friends were studying education and communication arts.
“We were a very different campus back then,” she said. “Women were coming into it carefully not because we were intimidated but because we had not opened those horizons yet to the possibilities that women had to do the things that women today take for granted. So we were opening a lot of doors and we were doing it carefully and when we looked back, we realized that yes that’s what we did, we were opening those doors, but the result is that now we have a student body that’s a little bit over 50 percent women, and women are pretty darn good students.”
She said the University is better because of the board’s decision to admit women. And she predicts that women will play an increasingly important role over the next 50 years as the University moves toward a time when it will no longer have a Jesuit as its president.
“I think we’ll look back and say that was a very smart move,” she said. “Any time you increase diversity whether it’s women, minorities, ethnic whatever the demographics are, you enrich the conversation, you enrich the brain power, because you have different experiences … So allowing women to be part of it just enhances the culture at Xavier and it enhances it really now from the top down which is significant. So women have continued to play a big role and I think they will continue to play a big role.”