“Nothing in Nature lives for itself. Trees don’t eat their own fruit.
Rivers don’t drink their own water.”

—The First 100 Years and the Next Years of the Maryknoll Mission and Miriam College

A hundred years ago, in 1920, the Maryknoll Sisters based in Ossining, New York were given their recognition as a foreign missionary congregation. Their mission : to bring “Christ to the world” as symbolized by the Chi Rho and to “cultivate God’s presence in one’s life.” These religious missionaries give their lives in service and give up so much, too, even their lives as in the case of the Maryknoll nuns who died in 1980 in their mission in El Salvador, or in donating their precious assets, like the Maryknoll College in Loyola Heights. It is this Maryknoll spirit of giving, service,  and “raising others up” that guides Miriam College in its educational mission.

Miriam College (formerly Maryknoll) — the greatest gift that any religious order can give to a nation – has evolved into an academic community known for its high academic standards and its course offerings based on the liberal arts. Truth, justice, peace, and the integrity of creation define its core values and provide the foundation of its educational programs.  Providing opportunities for students to learn academic disciplines while guiding students in seeking answers to questions on systemic economic inequality and on what is true, the College, through its main Academic Units and the Special Unit that provides education to lower income students, LEADS ITS GRADUATES ON THE PATH TO SERVICE AND A MEANINGFUL LIFE.  On the 100th year of the missionary formation of the Maryknoll Sisters and as Miriam College nears its 100th year of founding, Miriam College will go farther afield.

As it looks back to the past and forward to the future, Miriam College is moving its mission in education in terms of EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES  and in DEEPENING THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION, committed deeply to promoting its core values, to guiding its students in REDEFINING THE MEANING OF A SUCCESSFUL LIFE within the principle of LIFE AND WORK, guiding its community to actualize the true meaning of  “com (with) unity” to encouraging personal involvement in community and nation-building, to helping build marginalized lives.

These can only be done if the College will continue to work in RE-IMAGINING EDUCATION  and what PREPARATION FOR A COMPLEX AND UNCERTAIN FUTURE it should provide and opportunities it can open. It will therefore continue to provide an ACCESSIBLE EDUCATION at reasonable cost,  beyond its “brick and mortar buildings and physical campuses” in various ways: through a  BORDERLESS CAMPUS (the KNOLLER), through its various college course programs offered under various personalized time and financial arrangements, through alternative learning systems  where parents partner with teachers and the institution so that no child nor adult, no matter what her/his situation in life is, no matter in the world where she/he resides, no matter what her/his situation and background are,  should have to put her/his dream on hold or to have her/his life interrupted.

Moreover, after building its second campus in Nuvali, Laguna a few years back, within a few years the school will see its third campus in Alviera, Porac near Clark, rise.  The new campus will be committed to the same mission of accessible education, embracing marginalized communities like the Aetas near Porac, participating in humanitarian endeavors  wherever needed, etc., and keeping alive the Maryknoll spirit.

Miriam College will therefore remain as a platform and a channel for God’s work—

So that no dream is placed on hold and no life is left interrupted.  For it is God’s and Nature’s design  that trees have to grow and rivers have to flow.

Ambassador Laura Q. Del Rosario
President, Miriam College