Remembering Sr. Dorothy McCormick, SND
Our Trinity generations heading into the middle of the 21st Century may not have personally met all the great women whose devotion to this mission made it possible for so many to enjoy a Trinity education today, but we honor and revere those who ensured Trinity’s durability well beyond their own years in leadership for alma mater.
Sr. Dorothy McCormick, SND, Trinity ’64 was one of our stalwarts during a time of great stress and even some chaos at Trinity. She was Trinity’s Vice President and Treasurer (a position we call the Chief Financial Officer today) from 1975 to 1983, and she served for a period of time as the Interim President. I knew her slightly during those years, and she was always so smart, gracious and concerned to be sure that Trinity was fulfilling mission.
Those were difficult years for Trinity as enrollment declined and expenses rose dramatically as the college’s workforce became increasingly dominated by laypersons who needed competitive salaries. In earlier years, the many Sisters of Notre Dame who worked at Trinity did not take salaries, a practice known as “contributed services” worth millions over the years. As the chief financial officer, Sr. Dorothy had to keep the budget balanced even as costs rose and revenues declined. She did so with great zeal for Trinity’s mission and a deep sense of commitment to the vision of the SNDs for this great college.
Sr. Dorothy died on December 9, 2023, leaving a remarkable record of service not only to Trinity but to SND ministries in many places — and, notably, in Kenya where she spent the last 30 years of her active professional life.
A Philadelphia, native, Sr. Dorothy first met the Sisters of Notre Dame through her sister Claire who joined the order when Dorothy was very young; Dorothy then enrolled at the Academy of Notre Dame in Villanova, PA. where she attended from first grade through high school. After high school, she joined the SNDs, and then took up her collegiate studies at Trinity, majoring in Mathematics and minoring in Physics.
From Trinity, she went on to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania where she was one of just three women in the class. After earning her MBA at Wharton, she became Treasurer of the Maryland Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame, then serving a year as co-principal at the Academy of Notre Dame, before returning to Trinity as Treasurer in 1975.
Dorothy had a keen interest in issues of global inequality, and in 1984 she earned her master’s degree in International Economics at Johns Hopkins University, followed by her Ph.D. in 1988 with a concentration in African Studies and International Economics. She then moved to Kenya where she pursued her ministry for 30 years at the University of Nairobi and with the SND province in Nairobi.
Sr. Dorothy’s curriculum vitae (see McCormick CV) reflects an astonishing depth of research and publication on a broad range of topics in African and Kenyan economic development, active and contemporary through 2019. Her scholarship focused on issues ranging from food to transportation to clothing and entrepreneurship, always emphasizing the economic development opportunities for the people she taught and worked with in Kenya.
Trinity is grateful to Sr. Dorothy for the talent she shared with alma mater across the years, and our condolences go out to the community of the Sisters of Notre Dame and her extended community in Kenya.
