Jim Towey

Jim Towey
Former Director White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives
Nationality	United States
Education	B.S. and J.D.
Alma mater	Florida State University
Occupation	President and CEO of Ave Maria University
Religion	Roman Catholic
Spouse	Mary
Children	Five

Jim Towey served as Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and as Assistant to President George W. Bush from 2002 to May 2006. He served as president of Saint Vincent College, a small Catholic university in Latrobe, Pennsylvania from 2006 until stepping down on June 30, 2010. Towey currently serves as President and CEO of Ave Maria University in Florida.

Background and personal life

Towey graduated from Bishop Kenny High School in Jacksonville, Florida in 1974 and went on to Florida State University where he earned a Bachelor of Science with high honors in 1978 and a Juris Doctor in 1981.

Towey identifies as a Roman Catholic and is ostensibly a member of the Knights of Columbus.

He served as the sixteenth President of Saint Vincent College, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, from July 1, 2006 until June 30, 2010. As President, Towey serves as the Chief Executive Officer of an educational institution that has been recognized by Forbes magazine as one of "America’s Best Colleges".

Major accomplishments during the years of his presidency include record levels of applications, enrollment as well as new pledge commitments; three consecutive budget surpluses; and the initiation of the most expensive construction and renovation project in the college’s history. Towey has made a priority of recruiting minority and international students. He also created a new Office of Service Learning to provide opportunities for hundreds of Saint Vincent students to experience serving those in need. Towey also presided over as somewhat controversial reaccreditation of the college by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools in 2007. A frequent speaker to groups and organizations all over the United States, Towey has spoken or lectured at Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame, Dartmouth, Georgetown, and Davidson.

Towey, who served for four years as Assistant to the President of the United States and director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, was recognized by President George W. Bush for his work to improve the lives of those in need. Because of his work with the poor and infirm, consistent with his conscience and the dictates of his faith in the face of legal and public challenges, the Cuban Association of the Order of Malta has awarded Towey the 2009 Tuitio Fidei Award.

At the White House, Towey served as a member of President George W. Bush’s senior staff and reported directly to him on church-state and religious liberty issues, policies promoting tax incentives for enhanced charitable giving, and the implementation of individual choice in drug treatment, mentoring, housing and other federal programs.

Prior to his work at the White House, Towey in 1996 founded Aging with Dignity, a national non-profit organization to help individuals and their families plan for and receive appropriate care during times of serious illness. He created the document, Five Wishes, the most widely used advance directive in America with over 13 million copies in circulation.

Towey served in the administration of Florida Governor Lawton Chiles who brought him to Miami in 1991 as District Director of the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services where he presided during the time of Hurricane Andrew. He later became Secretary of the 40,000 employee agency.

Towey represented the late Mother Teresa on legal matters in the United States and Canada for 12 years (from 1985 until her death) and traveled with her on numerous occasions. He served nearly two years as a full-time volunteer in Mexico in one of Mother Teresa's missions and in her Washington, D.C. home for people suffering from AIDS. For the past three years he has returned to Calcutta with Saint Vincent College students to work in her missions.

A 1978 graduate of the Florida State University where he earned a Bachelor of Science Degree with high honors, Towey earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Florida State University College of Law in 1981.

He has been honored for his public service including six honorary doctoral degrees, the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Papal Cross from Pope John Paul II, the Omicron Delta Kappa Grad Made Good Award from Florida State University, and the Archbishop John Carroll Award from the Archdiocese of Miami. He is a member of the Knights of Columbus. During his career, Towey has appeared as a guest on multiple occasions on 60 Minutes and the NBC Today Show, as well as on Fox News Sunday, Good Morning America, and other major cable and network programs. He has been published in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Miami Herald.

Towey grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. He and his wife, Mary Towey, have five children: James Marion, Joseph Marius, Maximilian Marian, John Mariano and Marie Therese.

Career

Prior to his 2002 - 2006 White House service, Towey was employed for 12 years as a U.S. legal counsel to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. As her attorney, he helped to ensure people were not using Mother Teresa's name to raise money without her permission, assisted in establishing AIDS clinics and homeless shelters, and coordinated immigration matters for her nuns. In the 1980s Towey lived as a full-time volunteer in Mother Teresa's home for people with AIDS in Washington, D.C.^{[citation needed]}

Towey has said that the experience of working with Mother Teresa motivated him to establish the non-profit organization Aging with Dignity in 1996. The Five Wishes booklet and additional resources on CD help people express how they want to be treated if they are seriously ill and unable to speak for themselves. Over 12 million copies of the group's Five Wishes document, called "the living will with a heart and soul", have been distributed worldwide by more than 15,000 organizations.

During his 2002 - 2006 service as Faith Czar, (the informal name for Towey's White House position of Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives), Towey decried "militant secularism"; the view that religious considerations should be excluded from government affairs and public education.

Towey also served as senior adviser to U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Oregon) for ten years, and as director of Florida's health and human services agency under Gov. Lawton Chiles (D).

Saint Vincent College (2006 - 2010)

Towey became the sixteenth President of Saint Vincent College, a small Catholic school in Pennsylvania, on 1 July 2006.

During Towey's tenure as President, St. Vincent College made the top ten list of conservative colleges in the United States for the first time. However, Towey has faced some difficulties in his relationships with faculty members at St. Vincent. In April, 2008, he attributed much of the dissension to a clash of cultures with the predominantly Benedictine monk faculty, who were not accustomed to rapid change, and to the fact that he was "new to academia".

Towey attracted two high-profile commencement speakers to St. Vincent: President George W. Bush in 2007 and Mike Tomlin, coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2008. Towey stepped down as President on June 30, 2010.

Fr. Mark Gruber controversy

In November 2009 reports began emerging in which Towey accused a Saint Vincent College priest/professor, Fr. Mark Gruber, of sexual misconduct. In August 2009, local police were summoned to campus to investigate alleged instances of child pornography found on an open access computer outside Fr. Gruber's office. The police closed the case noting that, in addition to the open access to the computer, there was no evidence a crime had been committed - images of nude men were found, but no subjects could be identified as being under 18. Additionally, Inside Higher Ed suggests that Fr. Gruber's ongoing criticism of Saint Vincent's administration may have led Towey and Archabbot Nowicki to pursue unfounded allegations Additionally, in December, a man came forward to the Youngstown, Ohio diocese, claiming that he alone was responsible for the content on the computer. When made aware of the witness, Towey and Saint Vincent officials did not notify Gruber or the police. The State Police discovered the witness from another official, and after investigating the claim, found it to be true and credible.

In late 2010 Gruber dropped his defamation lawsuit against college and archabbey officials. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Archabbot Douglas Nowicki (Fr. Gruber's Benedictine superior) stated that during a deposition Gruber "finally had to confront his egregious misconduct." An attorney for the college has stated that Gruber admitted under oath that he created pornographic materials on a college computer, including "grossly inappropriate depictions of himself", and that when Father Gruber was confronted with pornographic photographs during the deposition he admitted creating and e-mailing the images. According to Father Gruber's attorney the evidence at deposition has been taken "completely out of context."

"Death book" op-ed

In an August 2009 op-ed Towey argued that the Obama administration was attempting to cut costs for the medical treatment of veterans by providing them with a "Death Book" which pressured the veterans to "forgo critical care". In an appearance on Fox News Sunday television show, Towey charged that the booklet was authored by an advocate of assisted suicide, and that it was being used to give "end of life" counseling to soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. On the show, Tammy Duckworth, Assistant Secretary for the Veteran's Administration, responded that printed copies of the booklet had been pulled from the shelves in 2007 and that the Obama administration was revising it. Duckworth also mentioned that "Towey has a competing book on end-of-life discussions that veterans can purchase for $5".

Ave Maria University

Towey will assume the role of President of Ave Maria University from Nicholas Healy on July 1st, 2011. The unanimous decision was made on February 8, 2011 at the regularly scheduled Board of Trustees meeting.

Awards

He received the Omicron Delta Kappa Award from Florida State University, Regnum Dei Award from the Archdiocese of Miami, and was awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross by Pope John Paul II on September 5, 2000, the third anniversary of the death of Mother Teresa.

See also

• White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

Preceded by John DiIulio Jr.

Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives February 1, 2002-May 31, 2006

Succeeded by Jay Hein

External links

• George W. Bush White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
• St. Vincent College, President's Blog
• St. Vincent College, President's Photographs
• Aging with Dignity