Four out­stand­ing alum­ni and a Sis­ter of St. Joseph of Clun­y­will be in­duct­ed in­to the St. Joseph’s Con­vent Port- of- Spain’s Past Pupils’ Hall of Ex­cel­lence this year.

The 9th bi­en­ni­al Cel­e­brat­ing Ex­cel­lence event takes place to­morow from 6 pm at the school’s chapel on Aber­crom­by Street, Port of Spain un­der the theme “Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion, A Vi­sion of Ex­cel­lence”.

This year’s in­ductees are:

• Sr. Mary Jean Ay­ow – Ed­u­ca­tor and Sis­ter of St. Joseph of Cluny

•Dr Maria Bartholomew – Con­sul­tant Gas­troen­terol­o­gist (Out­stand­ing alum)

• Hazel Brown LLD – Women and Con­sumer Rights Ac­tivist (Out­stand­ing alum)

• Dr. Paula Hen­ry – Med­ical Doc­tor and Founder of HAIT&T Foun­da­tion (Out­stand­ing alum)

•Dr. Michele Mon­teil – Clin­i­cal Im­mu­nol­o­gist, Re­searcher and Med­ical Ed­u­ca­tor (Out­stand­ing alum)

Es­tab­lished by the Past Pupils' As­so­ci­a­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2001, the Hall of Ex­cel­lence ho­n­ours out­stand­ing SJC POS alum­ni and in­di­vid­u­als as­so­ci­at­ed with the school, who have achieved ex­cel­lence in their re­spec­tive fields and who can be re­gard­ed as role mod­els to past and present stu­dents.

This year’s in­ductees join the ranks of 72 for­mer in­ductees in­clud­ing Jo­ce­lyn Mon­i­ca Pierre, for­mer di­rec­tor of the Mar­i­onette’s Chorale; Sr. An­net­ta Ju­liana Alexan­der, Founder of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Read­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, Prin­ci­pal, Vice Pres­i­dent of the Girl Guides As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Provin­cial Su­pe­ri­or of the Sis­ters of St. Joseph of Cluny; and child psy­chol­o­gist Allyson Hamel-Smith.

Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don will be the event’s Fea­tured Speak­er.

About the in­ductees

Sis­ters of St. Joseph of Cluny

Sr. Mary Jean Ay­ow

“If some­one of­fers you an amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty and you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it lat­er.” Richard Bran­son

These words epit­o­mise the en­ter­pris­ing, ad­ven­tur­ous spir­it of Sr. Mary Jean Ay­ow. Many of us of that era still re­mem­ber her as a young novice at St. Joseph’s Con­vent, Port of Spain, where she taught be­tween 1975 and 1978. Hav­ing made her first pro­fes­sion as a St. Joseph of Cluny Sis­ter in 1975, she went on to ob­tain her Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion at the Catholic Teacher Train­ing Col­lege in Ari­ma and spent 31 years as a teacher at Prov­i­dence Girls’ Sec­ondary School in Bel­mont, im­pact­ing gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents.

Her keen in­ter­est in Com­put­ers and In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and its role in the mod­ern class­room, led her to com­plete a Bach­e­lor of Arts (In­struc­tion­al Me­dia) as well as many oth­er IT cours­es, at Ry­er­son Poly­tech­nic (now Ry­er­son Uni­ver­si­ty) in 1988. In­deed, it was she who con­vinced the then Prin­ci­pal of Prov­i­dence and her men­tor, Sr. Regi­na to in­tro­duce IT Tech­ni­cal in­to the school’s cur­ricu­lum in 1992 and was re­spon­si­ble for de­sign­ing and de­liv­er­ing this syl­labus un­til her re­tire­ment in 2011. She cred­its Sr. Regi­na as her in­spi­ra­tion, en­cour­ag­ing cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion in her teach­ing.

As the Provin­cial Bur­sar since 1993, it was no sur­prise that up­on Sr. Mary Jean’s re­tire­ment in 2011, Sr. An­net­ta Alexan­der (then Provin­cial Su­pe­ri­or) brought to the ta­ble the ne­ces­si­ty to gen­er­ate in­come to fi­nance the health­care of el­der­ly Sis­ters who were in need of 24-hour health­care. The first task giv­en to St. Joseph’s Con­vent, Port of Spain Sr. Mary Jean was the ren­o­va­tion and out­fit­ting of the Javouhey Con­fer­ence Room. This was soon fol­lowed by the re­quest to retro­fit what was once the Con­vent Kitchen and for a short pe­ri­od of time a tem­po­rary space for Maria Regi­na In­fants, in­to a Tea Room. Sr. Mary Jean as­sem­bled a team and opened in 2013, serv­ing soup, sand­wich­es and light meals. Six years lat­er, the Aber­crom­bie Tea House has es­tab­lished it­self as a hub of ac­tiv­i­ty with its beau­ti­ful dé­cor and friend­ly am­bi­ence, serv­ing the sur­round­ing schools and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty – all un­der the vig­i­lance and care­ful man­age­ment of Sr. Mary Jean.

The shar­ing of their hos­pi­tal­i­ty has fa­cil­i­tat­ed a space that feeds mind, body and spir­it. She has of­ten re­marked on how re­ward­ing it is to see peo­ple of all walks and ages com­fort­able, hap­py and build­ing re­la­tion­ships in the Tea Room. Par­al­lel to her work at the Tea Room, Sr. Mary Jean be­came the li­ai­son for the Cluny Province of the West In­dies (the Eng­lish speak­ing Caribbean), sup­port­ing the work un­der­tak­en by HaiT&T to re­build the or­phan­age that was man­aged by the Cluny Province of Haiti. In a time where hope and trust were both ex­treme­ly chal­lenged, the pres­ence and en­cour­age­ment of the Cluny Province of the West In­dies and that of Ire­land were cru­cial to the ad­vance­ment of the Project.

Yet, above all the achieve­ments and ac­co­lades for her good works, Sr. Mary Jean re­mains a hum­ble, cheer­ful, and self-giv­ing in­di­vid­ual who has ded­i­cat­ed her life to serv­ing oth­ers with the knowl­edge that she is liv­ing her vo­ca­tion of call­ing oth­ers to Christ. She is rarely found in the spot­light, but in­stead dili­gent­ly work­ing be­hind the set to en­sure that plans come to fruition. Her gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it and of self con­tin­ues to in­spire and awe those who know her.

OUT­STAND­ING ALUM­NAE

Dr. Maria Bartholomew

Dr. Maria Bartholomew re­mem­bers her days as a stu­dent at St. Joseph’s Con­vent, Port of Spain, fond­ly. As a dif­fi­dent back­bencher, she qui­et­ly ab­sorbed the in­struc­tion of her teach­ers who gave her the con­fi­dence and mo­ti­va­tion to em­bark on her ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion jour­ney.

De­spite com­ing from a med­ical fam­i­ly, her first love was Com­put­er Sci­ence and her first job, tak­en dur­ing a gap year af­ter grad­u­a­tion, was with IBM. She thought that she had land­ed her dream job that would launch her ca­reer in Com­put­er Sci­ence. Alas, no such luck; she was as­signed to the Ac­counts De­part­ment in the base­ment be­neath the com­put­er room with just one win­dow through which the top of a Sa­van­nah samaan tree could be glimpsed! She was saved, how­ev­er, by an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take part in a med­ical re­search project spear­head­ed by her fa­ther. This ex­po­sure which was lay­ered up­on her sci­ence train­ing from her al­ma mater sparked her in­ter­est in the field of Med­i­cine.

Al­though ad­mit­ted to med­ical school abroad, Maria elect­ed to stay in the Caribbean and at­tend The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Med­ical School. That was five years of fun, a good bit of pro­cras­ti­na­tion and hard work cul­mi­nat­ing with the re­al­iza­tion that this was where her pas­sion lay. She grad­u­at­ed in 1987 with the Al­len­bury Prize in In­ter­nal Med­i­cine. Maria’s post­grad­u­ate train­ing took her to Lon­don and then to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi Jack­son Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal where she sub-spe­cial­ized in both Gas­troen­terol­o­gy and He­pa­tol­ogy (the study of liv­er dis­ease).

She re­turned to Trinidad in 1997 where she has served in var­i­ous roles in­clud­ing: Lec­tur­er with The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Con­sul­tant in Gas­troen­terol­o­gy and He­pa­tol­ogy with the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, Di­rec­tor on the Board of North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, Vol­un­tary Fac­ul­ty with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi William J. Har­ring­ton Pro­gram, Di­rec­tor on the Board of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Crohn’s and Col­i­tis Trinidad and To­ba­go. She has part­nered with col­leagues in Ar­genti­na, USA and In­dia to fa­cil­i­tate liv­er trans­plan­ta­tion for lo­cal pa­tients in need and this year she was rec­og­nized by her peers as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion Ho­n­ouree for 2019.

Men­tor­ship is im­por­tant to her. She en­joys giv­ing guid­ance to young Doc­tors, en­cour­ag­ing them to find their pas­sion based on what they love and en­joy, and to rec­og­nize and fear­less­ly seize op­por­tu­ni­ties. Above all, she ad­vo­cates to them the im­por­tance of prac­tis­ing with com­pas­sion and fair­ness. Her most poignant and proud mo­ment as a Physi­cian oc­curred this year (2019) when she trav­elled to Cana­da to re­ceive, to­geth­er with one of her cousins, a posthu­mous med­ical de­gree from Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty award­ed to her great-un­cle Ethel­bert Bartholomew who was un­able to com­plete his med­ical de­gree in 1916 be­cause of a racist pol­i­cy at Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty. To her, his sad sto­ry serves as a stark re­minder that we stand on the shoul­ders of our par­ents and pre­de­ces­sors who fought greater odds than us and to whom we re­main for­ev­er in­debt­ed.

She urges the young suc­ces­sors to her gen­er­a­tion at St. Joseph’s Con­vent to work hard, be grate­ful, seek the com­mon good, and, keep God at the cen­tre - Yes you can!

OUT­STAND­ING ALUM­NAE

Hazel Brown

This out­stand­ing past stu­dent of St. Joseph’s Con­vent, Port of Spain, promi­nent and pas­sion­ate ad­vo­cate of hu­man rights, Hazel Brown has giv­en un­stint­ing­ly for decades to the up­lift­ment of her fel­low Caribbean cit­i­zens. From as far back as 1969, she has been pro­fes­sion­al­ly in­volved in re­search, so­cial de­vel­op­ment and com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion projects. Her spe­cif­ic fo­cus has been in the area of pover­ty erad­i­ca­tion, con­sumer af­fairs and the pro­mo­tion of gen­der eq­ui­ty. She has or­gan­ised and con­duct­ed nu­mer­ous sem­i­nars and work­shops pur­suant to these ends through the or­gan­i­sa­tions she has been a part of as well as in col­lab­o­ra­tion with gov­ern­ment min­istries, CARI­COM, Com­mon­wealth or­gan­i­sa­tions, OAS, IDB, PA­HO, UNIFEM, UN­ESCO and oth­er UN agen­cies.

Wide­ly re­gard­ed as one of the most dy­nam­ic women of the Caribbean, she has worked with a vast num­ber of women’s or­gan­i­sa­tions and lead­ers for the up­lift­ment of women through­out the re­gion. She is a found­ing mem­ber of the Net­work of NGOs of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the Ad­vance­ment of Women, a com­pre­hen­sive na­tion­al um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion formed to present the po­si­tion of women in Trinidad and To­ba­go at the Third World Con­fer­ence on Women held in Nairo­bi in 1985. She is the past Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Com­mon­wealth Women’s Net­work and has been en­gaged in Com­mon­wealth ac­tiv­i­ties since the first Com­mon­wealth Peo­ple’s Fo­rum at the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing in Harare in 1991. She has been a con­sis­tent ad­vo­cate for a strong voice and space for civ­il so­ci­ety in Com­mon­wealth ac­tiv­i­ties and de­ci­sion-mak­ing. She was a na­tion­al Spe­cial En­voy for women and girls with the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, a Board mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Agribusi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion and the Diego Mar­tin Con­sumer Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety.

With an ex­em­plary record of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, she is the re­cip­i­ent of nu­mer­ous na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al awards and com­men­da­tions. No­tably, she was the first re­cip­i­ent of the Na­tion­al Award for De­vel­op­ment of Women in 2014. In fact, in March 2015, the In­sti­tute of Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies joined the Net­work of NGO’s for the Ad­vance­ment of Women, the Of­fice of the Unit­ed Na­tions Res­i­dent Co­or­di­na­tor, the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Work­ing Women for So­cial Progress to host a con­fer­ence in com­mem­o­ra­tion of Hazel Brown’s com­mit­ment and con­tri­bu­tion ti­tled “Fear­less Pol­i­tics: The Life and Times of Hazel Brown”. Lec­tur­er, Dr. Gabrielle Ho­sein, one of the con­fer­ence or­gan­is­ers, said, “There are few Caribbean cit­i­zens like Hazel Brown. Her sto­ry should re­mind an­oth­er gen­er­a­tion that we don’t have to in­vent new strate­gies or search for more con­tem­po­rary is­sues, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to women’s rights. What we have to do is learn from and con­tin­ue her lega­cy.” In 2017, she was award­ed an hon­orary Doc­tor­al De­gree by The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St. Au­gus­tine.

A proud grad­u­ate of St. Joseph’s Con­vent, Port of Spain, two of her daugh­ters, Dr. Leah Brown and Madam Jus­tice Car­la Brown-An­toine are al­so grad­u­ates of St. Joseph’s Con­vent. As a thir­ty-year can­cer sur­vivor, with four grown chil­dren and eight grand­chil­dren, she re­mains a shin­ing ex­am­ple of de­ter­mi­na­tion, faith, courage and above all ser­vice to oth­ers.

OUT­STAND­ING ALUM­NAE

Dr. Paula Hen­ry

“As Con­vent girls who have been for­tu­nate enough to re­ceive a Cluny ed­u­ca­tion, it is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to care for those less for­tu­nate than our­selves.” With these words, Dr. Paula Hen­ry has summed up the ethos by which she lives. As a physi­cian, moth­er and grand­moth­er, this life-long learn­er al­though of­fi­cial­ly re­tired, con­tin­ues to find ways to help make her coun­try and by ex­ten­sion, the Caribbean, a bet­ter place. Hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from St. Joseph’s Con­vent, Port of Spain in 1973, she pur­sued her stud­ies in Med­i­cine at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Mona, and be­gan her med­ical prac­tice in 1980.

Al­ways ea­ger to im­prove her skills and broad­en her field of knowl­edge, she com­plet­ed a Diplo­ma in Fam­i­ly Med­i­cine in 1992 and holds a Mas­ter’s in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion (Ed­in­burgh Busi­ness School, 2009), a Grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Pol­i­tics (Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, 2018) and a Cer­tifi­cate in Cli­mate Change and Health (Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, 2019). Af­ter her re­tire­ment in 2018, she en­rolled in the Mas­ters of Pub­lic Health, a three-year pro­gramme at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St. Au­gus­tine, which fo­cus­es on en­sur­ing the health of the plan­et, link­ing air pol­lu­tion with car­diac deaths and res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases.

Her em­pa­thy for the un­der­priv­i­leged and the down-trod­den, and es­pe­cial­ly young peo­ple, finds prac­ti­cal ex­pres­sion in the vast num­ber of or­gan­i­sa­tions in which she is in­volved. Paula trav­elled to Haiti short­ly af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in 2010 as part of a med­ical team sent by the Sis­ters of St. Joseph of Cluny to re-es­tab­lish the med­ical clin­ic there. She was moved by the hor­ror that she wit­nessed and its im­pact on the most vul­ner­a­ble and dis­pos­sessed in Hait­ian so­ci­ety. This led her to found the HaiT&T Foun­da­tion, of which she re­mains the Di­rec­tor.

Over the last nine years, with in­ter­na­tion­al help, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has helped re­build the Cluny or­phan­age - es­tab­lish­ing a school for six hun­dred chil­dren, and be­cause these chil­dren come from the poor­est of the poor, care homes for girls were con­struct­ed. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the Project re­sides in the soon to be op­er­a­tional bak­ery and a chick­en farm for egg pro­duc­tion.

Among the many so­cial out­reach pro­grammes she has or­gan­ised and con­duct­ed over the years are: her men­tor­ship of two Form 4 class­es at El Do­ra­do Com­pre­hen­sive School in the 1990’s, The Sev­en Habits of High­ly Ef­fec­tive Teenagers pro­gramme in 2003, the Grow with the Flow Con­fer­ence to en­hance the lives of teens in 2004, and the Jour­ney to­wards Whole­ness, a re­li­gious sem­i­nar in­cor­po­rat­ing el­e­ments of healthy liv­ing in 2005. With her pas­sion for the en­vi­ron­ment

and for al­le­vi­at­ing the neg­a­tive im­pacts of cli­mate change and pol­lu­tion on hu­man health, she be­came a mem­ber of both the Work­ing Par­ty for the En­vi­ron­ment, Caribbean Re­gion and the Work­ing Par­ty for Women and Fam­i­ly Med­i­cine, Caribbean, which in­cludes work­ing on is­sues re­lat­ing to vec­tor borne dis­eases and nu­tri­tion­al de­fi­cien­cies as­so­ci­at­ed with drought and floods. She is al­so a mem­ber of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, the Med­ical Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Caribbean Col­lege of Fam­i­ly Physi­cians and the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Fam­i­ly Physi­cians.

Above all, Dr. Paula Hen­ry iden­ti­fies four tenets to live by:

· Ed­u­ca­tion for ser­vice

· Covenan­tal re­la­tion­ships

· Be­come a life-long learn­er and pass on knowl­edge ac­quired.

· Do not wait un­til you have reached your ul­ti­mate po­ten­tial to start giv­ing back.

Cer­tain­ly, ad­mirable words wor­thy of be­ing em­u­lat­ed.

OUT­STAND­ING ALUM­NAE

Dr. Michele Anne Mon­teil

Dr. Michele Mon­teil (née Bain), B.Sc., MB.BS., M.Sc., Ph.D., FR­C­Path (Lond.) is a physi­cian, clin­i­cal im­mu­nol­o­gist, re­searcher, ex­pe­ri­enced med­ical ed­u­ca­tor, moth­er, grand­moth­er, men­tor. These are just some of the caps that Dr. Michele Mon­teil wears on a dai­ly ba­sis. Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from St. Joseph’s Con­vent, Port of Spain, she went on to pur­sue a ca­reer in med­i­cine. In fact, she says that she doesn’t re­mem­ber ever want­i­ng to do any­thing else!

Ear­ly in her stud­ies, hav­ing heard a se­ries of lec­tures on Clin­i­cal Im­munol­o­gy while she was at the Queen Eliz­a­beth Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, she de­cid­ed on this as her area of spe­cial­i­sa­tion. She stud­ied Bio­chem­istry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don; Med­i­cine at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and then did post­grad­u­ate Mas­ters, Doc­tor­ate and Fel­low­ship de­grees in Lon­don, Eng­land. Im­pres­sive­ly, this moth­er of three must sure­ly have been one of the few to have grad­u­at­ed at the top of her class at Med­ical school – a feat of which she is jus­ti­fi­ably proud.

She taught and pro­vid­ed clin­i­cal im­muno­log­i­cal out­pa­tient ser­vices for 15 years at the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences, Mt. Hope Hos­pi­tal. While there, she thor­ough­ly en­joyed teach­ing and do­ing re­search with fu­ture young doc­tors and sci­en­tists on projects in­ves­ti­gat­ing risk fac­tors for asth­ma and oth­er al­ler­gic dis­eases in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Her re­search group pro­vid­ed pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion on links be­tween Sa­hara dust cov­er and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors in ex­ac­er­ba­tion of pae­di­atric asth­ma. The groups al­so not­ed dif­fer­ences be­tween rates of se­vere asth­ma among chil­dren and ado­les­cents in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with chil­dren from To­ba­go re­port­ing more symp­toms of un­con­trolled asth­ma at the time of the study. She is cur­rent­ly Pro­fes­sor of Im­munol­o­gy at the Au­gus­ta Uni­ver­si­ty-The Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia Med­ical Part­ner­ship, an in­no­v­a­tive med­ical school in Athens, Geor­gia, USA.

A pro­lif­ic re­searcher, she con­tin­ues to pub­lish her find­ings on a wide range of med­ical phe­nom­e­na and has been the re­cip­i­ent of many ho­n­ours and awards, on­ly one of which is the Caribbean Women in Sci­ence Medal, award­ed by the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of High­er Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy of Trinidad and To­ba­go, 2011.

Dr. Mon­teil has been for­tu­nate to have worked and taught at med­ical schools in the Unit­ed King­dom, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Oman and the Unit­ed States. She is the third gen­er­a­tion in her fam­i­ly to be ed­u­cat­ed by St. Joseph of Cluny Sis­ters, and has al­ways re­flect­ed on the many ex­am­ples of strong fe­male lead­er­ship that she ex­pe­ri­enced as a stu­dent at Con­vent. She al­so learnt how good teach­ers make a dif­fer­ence in stu­dents’ lives. Hence, she has al­ways striv­en to be the best teacher and role mod­el she could be to her stu­dents.

She has al­ways in­vest­ed in her com­mu­ni­ty, and as part of a com­mu­ni­ty ac­tion group in St. Ann’s and Cas­cade, she start­ed a free com­mu­ni­ty clin­ic which con­tin­ues to pro­vide free med­ical ser­vices to the res­i­dents of St. Ann’s, Cas­cade and Holo­lo on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noons. Since mov­ing to the USA, she has served as a Board mem­ber of the Geor­gia Con­flict Cen­ter, which teach­es restora­tive jus­tice prac­tices to help mit­i­gate against vi­o­lence when there is con­flict.

While Dr. Mon­teil con­tin­ues to live and work abroad, she re­mains close­ly con­nect­ed to her beloved coun­try and fam­i­ly, mak­ing both the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and the com­mu­ni­ty of her al­ma mater proud of her many out