Walter Poland ’66 remembers the moment that took place nearly a decade ago as though it were yesterday. He was flipping through an issue of Le Moyne College Magazine, reading about the College’s Madden School of Business, when two words stopped him in his tracks: “conscious capitalism.” At the time Poland served as the vice president of global initiatives at Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3), and was working with Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios (UMD) in Bogota, Colombia. UMD’s leaders wanted to form a partnership with a college or university in the U.S. that shared its commitment to ethics as well as to academics. Poland thought about how UMD’s mission might align with that of his alma mater. He put down the magazine and sent a message to Jim Joseph ’83, who’d recently been named dean of the Madden School of Business, to ask if he might be interested in such a collaboration. He heard back almost immediately, and the two began a dialogue that continues to this day.
Their conversations served as the foundation of the establishment of what is now the Walter and MaryAnne Poland Jesuit Center for Research and Teaching Innovation. The Poland Center, as it is known, was made possible thanks to an extraordinarily generous $1 million gift from Poland and his late wife. One of four Centers of Excellence housed within the Madden School, it was created in order to build the intellectual infrastructure of the School. Under the leadership of Director Martha Grabowski, Ph.D., it aims to continue to draw faculty to the School who are not only outstanding educators and practitioners in their fields, but who are also committed to contributing to the overall body of knowledge in a way that informs their teaching, inspires their students, and helps to raise the profile of the Madden School overall. The Poland Center also seeks to collaborate with the three other Centers of Excellence in order to expand their capacity, influence and reach. It has already supported research opportunities for faculty in a variety of disciplines. This includes: an investigation into how different individuals collaborate and contribute to collective intelligence in online communities, how data breaches can impact a bank’s performance and operations, and how finance interacts with various socioeconomic outcomes and how financial-sector interventions can be used to mitigate socioeconomic inequalities.
Both of the Polands dedicated themselves to lives rich in purpose and meaning. Over the course of his decades-long career at TC3, Walter served as a professor of psychology and dean of student services before retiring as vice president of global initiatives, a role that he found particularly fulfilling. A proud Le Moyne alumnus, he returns to campus whenever possible for events such as the Madden Lecture and serves on the Madden Advisory Board. MaryAnne centered her life on her faith and her family, and was deeply involved in the couple’s parish, Immaculate Conception, near their home in Ithaca, N.Y. She also cultivated a wide array of interests, including in finance, philosophy and theology, that she carefully nurtured. Walter hopes that the Center named for their family will help to promote teaching and scholarship that is visionary and forward-looking, and serves as an inspiration to others.
“I could not have imagined when I was a student that I would spend my professional life in higher education,” Poland said. “That said, my time at Le Moyne taught me a tremendous amount about the importance of sharing what you have and leaving things better than they were when you found them. That’s what I hope the Poland Center will inspire in our students and faculty. I hope that I am around in another 20 years to continue to see the fruits of what we have started.”