President: 1952-1964
Fr. Edward Bunn, S.J., served as Georgetown's 43rd president from 1952-1964. At the time of his retirement, Fr. Bunn's 12-year tenure leading the university was the longest of any Georgetown president. Georgetown experienced significant changes under his leadership, including the creation of the University's business school and substantial construction.
Early Life and Academic Career
Edward Bunn grew up in Baltimore, Maryland where he completed high school in three years before graduating from Loyola College in Baltimore in 1917. Despite an interest in medicine and a scholarship to Johns Hopkins medical school, Fr. Bunn joined the Jesuit novitiate at St. Andrew-on-Hudson in New York. After earning an M.A. in English in 1921, Fr. Bunn spent the next nine years teaching at Woodstock College and Fordham University. In 1920, Fr. Bunn earned a Phd.D in Philosophy from Gregorian University in Rome. Fr. Bunn then served as president of Loyola College from 1938 until 1947. In 1948, Fr. Bunn came to Georgetown where he served as regent of the dental and nursing schools. In October 1952, following the extended absence of Fr. Guthrie, Fr. Bunn became the University’s forty-third president.1
Faculty reforms
Fr. Bunn began his tenure by interviewing each faculty member in his office in an effort to get to know them better and learn their thoughts on their work and the University.2 A massive effort to unify and centralize the University followed. In his first year, Fr. Bunn combined the graduate faculty in the history, physics, and political science departments with their counterparts in the college. The faculty of the SFS were integrated into these departments soon after. In 1954, Fr. Bunn created a council of academic deans and required each school develop an executive faculty. The following year Fr. Bunn combined the libraries of the various schools into one and created the office of academic vice president to oversee the main campus. The next year he centralized academic record-keeping creating the position of University Registrar. In 1963, Fr. Bunn united the foreign language departments which had previously existed independently in the College, the SFS, and the Institute of Languages and Linguistics.3
Riley Hughes, an associate professor of English, remarked, “Fr. Bunn addressed himself to the task of bringing into being a vital and revitalizing unification of the schools which would unite them in a common purpose without a loss of their integrity or their identity.”4
Legacy and Accomplishments
Two new schools were added during this time. The School of Business Administration, later known as the McDonough School of Business, grew out of the School of Foreign Service in 1957. The School for Summer and Continuing Education, later known as the School of Continuing Studies, was also founded in the 1950s. The student body doubled during this time from 4,702 to 7,461.5
The University’s physical facilities also expanded, with Fr. Bunn overseeing a decade long $21 million dollar building program that included St. Mary’s Hall, the Edmund A. Walsh Building, Darnall Hall, the Reiss Science Building, Kober-Cogan, the Gorman Diagnostic Clinic, and New South. This growth earned Fr. Bunn the nickname, “Georgetown’s Fourth Founder,” but he wanted to be remembered not as a builder but an educator saying “Building are the outgrowth of your educational programs. It’s the decisions about the educational programs that are important.”6
Retirement and Later Years
In 1964, Fr. Bunn retired from the position of President after an unprecedented twelve year term, and he was succeeded by Fr. Gerard Campbell. When a colleague asked Fr. Bunn how he would refrain from running the University, Fr. Bunn responded, “Simple, I will spend all my time giving support to the president. I won’t have time to interfere, for I will be too busy doing what he wants done.”7
Fr. Bunn spent the remainder of his life serving the next three presidents in the newly created position of Chancellor. After his death in 1973, the University announced the Edward B. Bunn, S.J. Award for Faculty Excellence, and in 1982, the Edward B. Bunn, S.J. Intercultural Center was completed and dedicated in his honor.
Bunn Journalism Award
In honor of Father Bunn, every year, undergraduate students who make an outstanding contribution to a student publication are selected for the Bunn award and given a $200 prize and bronze medallion. The selection is made by a panel of judges, comprised of journalism professors and Georgetown alumni who are now journalists. There are six categories for students to present their work on: features, news, commentary, review, sports, and photography.
- 1“An Institution Is But the Lengthened Shadow of a Man: Father Bunn ‘With Love and Distinction’ Until the End.” Georgetown Today. July 1972, pp.4-5.
- 2Emmett Curran, Robert. “A History of Georgetown University The Quest for Excellence, 1889-1964.” 2010, p.281.
- 3Id. at p.282.
- 4“Georgetown Chancellor, Former President Dies at 76.” News from Georgetown University. 1972, p.326.
- 5“An Institution Is But the Lengthened Shadow of a Man: Father Bunn ‘With Love and Distinction’ Until the End,” p.6.
- 6Id.
- 7“An Institution Is But the Lengthened Shadow of a Man: Father Bunn ‘With Love and Distinction’ Until the End,” p.7.
