Innovative and practical responsiveness to the needs of all people.

Creativity at Niagara University, in the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul, is about recognizing needs and working together to determine and deliver solutions, both within the university community and beyond the campus.

Niagara is meeting the challenge of providing new opportunities to learn by developing research projects in fields that include bioinformatics and cardiac health, and launching active-learning initiatives that enable students to link what they learn in the classroom to what’s happening around the world.

The university is enhancing the quality of life for our local community by making the cultural riches of our Castellani Art Museum available free of charge to the area’s residents, and making live theater accessible to area students through our theater department’s special On Time presentations. The university community works with local citizens to revive and restore the commercial and residential neighborhoods of the adjoining city, and to protect the environment. We join together to respond to the material needs of local residents, not just during the holidays, but every day. We also support our own students in need by contributing to a scholarship fund established by employees.

The university community engages in innovative ways to respond to the world’s needs as well. For example, a member of the university’s institutional advancement team was so moved by the tsunami tragedy in Indonesia that he planned a special lunch to raise funds for disaster relief. The meal featured Indonesian cuisine that friends from that part of the world had taught him to prepare.

In times of tragedy and sorrow both on campus and off, Niagara University is responsive and supportive to the needs of all people.

Fr. Levesque's Vision

We must be financially stable, now, and for many years to come. We must be creative about this. We must also work hard to finish successfully our $65-million capital campaign, as well as to increase our endowment to reach $70 million by 2010.

We must continue to be collaborative in fulfilling our mission. In recent years, much significant collaboration has been achieved with St. John’s University and DePaul University. I look forward to accomplishing outstanding new, Vincentian programs: sharing our Vincentian charism with others who will succeed us in our ministry, establish important programs for the teaching of social justice and the Catholic intellectual tradition, and creative ways to bring young men and women to service of the poor.

We must start a serious plan for diversity in our faculty and student body and, ideally, throughout the university.