Marywood President Sr. Mary Persico, IHM, Ed.D, will visit Africa to teach a leadership course over winter break.

Persico will be traveling to Gambia, Senegal and West Africa from Jan. 4 to Jan. 22. During her travels, she will be teaching a leadership course to 39 women from 13 different countries.

Persico said before taking over as Marywood’s president, she had made commitments outside of the university that she said she wanted to follow through with to “be a person of integrity.”

One of the commitments was to teach a group of international sisters a course on leadership.

According to Persico, the course will incorporate the qualities of leadership.

“We’ll be doing case studies that they might find themselves faced with in their different cultures in terms of developing leadership skills,” she said.

The course will cover having a sense of resilience as well as a sense of spirituality as a leader, specifically for someone who is a servant leader, she said.

Persico said the course will be translated into four different languages.

“They’ll be able to apply some of the principles that I present them and maybe even do some things that will help them in their work like in Mexico and Venezuela and Ireland and France,” Persico said.

She added that while she is gone, she will still be able to communicate with the offices at Marywood over the Internet.

“I’m happy [the trip] is during the semester break because the students aren’t here and the faculty for the most part aren’t here,” she said.

Contact the writer: [email protected]
Twitter: @RLookerTWW