Mount Mercy inaugurates ninth president

CEDAR RAPIDS - The ninth president of Mount Mercy University was inaugurated Friday during an installation ceremony that welcomed the school's first female leader since 1977.

Laurie M. Hamen was appointed in December after university officials announced in May 2013 that previous President Christopher Blake would not return after his one-year sabbatical. Officials at the Cedar Rapids school had announced only a week earlier that Blake had been granted the sabbatical to run through May 2014 but then cited 'two separate employee matters” in announcing that he would not return and confirming that Provost Melody Graham was taking a leave of absence.

Details about Blake's departure and Graham's leave have not been made public.

Blake had been president for seven years, arriving in 2006 on the heels of Robert Pearce, who served from 1999 to 2006, and Thomas Feld, who served for more than two decades from 1977 to 1999. Before Feld, all of the university's leaders had been female - Catholic sisters starting with Sister Mary Ildephonse Holland in 1928.

After the announcement that Blake would not return, Norm Nielsen was named interim president - a position he left retirement to accept.

Hamen brings with her nearly 30 years of higher education experience in student affairs, enrollment, management, athletics, academics and grant procurement, according to university officials. She most recently was serving as vice president for enrollment management, athletics and student affairs at North Central College in Naperville, Ill., where she had been for 18 years.

Before North Central, Hamen had worked in Catholic higher education at College of St. Benedict in Saint Joseph, Minn., and at St. Mary's University in Winona, Minn. She was chosen after a nationwide search that left Mount Mercy's board of trustees impressed with Hamen's 'passion for private liberal arts education and the Mercy mission.”

After the selection was announced last year, Hamon said she was 'extremely excited.”

'Mount Mercy University has a long-standing reputation of providing high-quality education in the spirit of the Sisters of Mercy, and I am honored to play a part in molding the future of this great institution,” Hamen said.

Hamen started the job in February, and board of trustees Chairman Brandt Worley said before Friday's inauguration that Hamon 'has been doing a marvelous job.”

'She leads with the same spark of courage and faith as the founders of this university, the Sisters of Mercy,” Worley said.

After his departure from Mount Mercy, Blake in November was named president of Middle Georgia State College in Decatur, Ga. He assumed the new role Jan. 1.

Former provost Graham no longer is listed as an employee at Mount Mercy.