QUINCY — Ten months after arriving in Quincy to begin work as president of Quincy University, Robert Gervasi formally became its 22nd president at an inaugural ceremony, April 3. He is the first president in the university’s 149-year history, who is a layperson, not a member of a religious order.

“Higher Learning, Franciscan Living” was the theme for the inauguration and Gervasi’s inaugural address at the university, founded in 1860 by Franciscan friars from Germany.

The inaugural activities included a morning symposium on “Franciscan Spirituality in the Educational Setting”; an inauguration ceremony and reception, and a special inaugural Mass in the Quincy University Chapel.

In keeping with the Franciscan tradition, service projects for students and QU supporters were held throughout the Quincy community, as part of the inaugural activities. They included a spring clean-up, an on-campus landscaping project, and a community-wide book drive to fund literacy initiatives.

In his inaugural address, Gervasi, who has an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and his doctorate in classics from Ohio State University, spoke about St. Francis. While well known as the patron saint of the environment, animals and birds, Francis is also the patron saint of merchants. “He understood the spirit of enterprise,” Gervasi said.

“I believe it is important that, as Franciscan educators, we cultivate in our students the Franciscan value of enterprise, whatever fields they choose to pursue.” Enterprise represents the practical expression, the active implementation, of the core Franciscan values of service and respect for all persons and all creation, rooted in a caring community.

“Our charge at Quincy University is to educate not only enterprising business leaders but also enterprising artists, enterprising nurses, enterprising musicians, enterprising psychologists, enterprising attorneys, enterprising scientists, enterprising teachers, enterprising historians. People of faith and service who are alert to opportunities and who have developed the talent and skills to realize them. People who have learned not only how to make a living but how to make a life worth living.”