Ministries in Education

Grand Rapids Dominican Sisters today teach in formal and informal education settings. Our Sisters’ education ministries include New Testament biblical scholars, and authors, college and university nursing and social work professors, teaching and tutoring in elementary and secondary school classrooms, religious education in parish schools, and more. Sisters also provide adult faith education and spiritual formation in parishes and other groups settings.

In 2020, our Sister Barbara Reid OP, was named the first women president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Sister Barbara is also a biblical scholar. Her studies and work as researcher, author, teacher, and preacher inspire men and women worldwide to explore contemporary interpretations of scriptural texts.

Our education ministry locations include Aquinas College, Catholic Theological Union, Notre Dame, University of Detroit College Mercy, Sacred Heart Parish on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, Holy Redeemer Grade School in Detroit, and parish and public schools in Grand Rapids, and more.

At Dominican Center Marywood at Aquinas College, we offer spiritual formation experiences for seekers and spiritual directors. Faith leaders and laypeople from all faith traditions seek study and transformation at Dominican Center, too.

Women are not alone in their efforts to build a more just society and church... A Feminist... is a person who is committed to the humanity, dignity, and equality of all persons, to such as extent that she or he is willing to work for changes both in relationship patterns and in institutional structures to achieve this goal.

Historic Perspective

“Sisters, will you come and teach?” In 1853, Sisters from Ratisbon, Germany, responded to this plea from New York City and sent several Sisters to educate the children of German immigrants there. Newcomers themselves, they journeyed to a new mission field to praise, bless, and preach through the ministry of education.

“Sisters, will you come and teach?” was next asked in a letter from Traverse City, Michigan, drawing Sisters westward to serve the educational needs of children and families. Invitations followed throughout Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, to St. John’s Home in Grand Rapids, to Melville, Saskatchewan in Canada, to San Juan Pueblo in New Mexico, and points in between. In the early decades the call was always to teach in classrooms. Later, that came with challenges such as a mimeograph machine in danger of flaming out as it churned the worksheets needed for the dozens of children filling every available square inch of the classroom in the 1950s and early 1960s!

Visit the Archives Department of the Dominican Sisters~Grand Rapids at 2025 Fulton Street East, East Wing lower level, to learn more about our history as educators and school administrators.  Or, read one of our published history books. Each of these books is available through the Archives Department or for sale in the Bookstore at Dominican Center at Marywood.

• Period Pieces: An Account of the Grand Rapids Dominicans 1853-1966 by Mona Schwind, OP
• Tapestry in Time: The Story of the Dominican Sisters Grand Rapids, Michigan 1966-2012 edited by Mary Navarre, OP
• Dominican Sisters Grand Rapids 1877-1915 by Michael Ellen Carling, OP