UD to become first college with convent for Nashville Dominican Sisters

By Amy White
The Texas Catholic

On Jan. 18, the University of Dallas in Irving announced that UD will be the first university to house the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, also known as the Nashville Dominicans, in a convent on the university campus.

The convent will allow the sisters to be part of a diverse collection of religious communities housed on or near campus, including the Dominican Priory of St. Albert the Great, Holy Trinity Seminary, and the nearby Cistercian Abbey.  Notably, the proposed structure will be the first on-campus convent at the University of Dallas for religious women.

“We are incredibly grateful that the sisters will be partnering with us in this way,” said Dr. Jonathan J. Sanford, president of the University of Dallas. “They are an order that has been growing and attracts really dynamic and energetic sisters that are incredibly joyful…. I feel blessed that the University of Dallas has been identified as the only university which will have a convent for this community.”

The Nashville Dominicans, founded in 1860 in Nashville, are an order committed to evangelization through education. Since the order’s founding, several “mission convents” have been established throughout the country. These are microcosms of the religious life that the sisters have at the Motherhouse in Nashville.

“As the Lord has enabled us to grow, we’ve been able to serve more and more places throughout the country and actually, in the last decade or so, also abroad,” said Sister John Thomas Armour, OP, the local superior of the Nashville Dominican sisters in the Dallas area. “So, we have a total currently of 53 schools where we serve, and that’s spread out over 31 dioceses.”

The Nashville Dominicans began serving at UD in 2016, offering their services as teachers at the university. Currently, two Nashville Dominicans teach at the university in the theology and philosophy departments, and Sister Armour studies at the school.

Sister Armour is an alumna of the University of Dallas, who graduated from the school in 2001; she entered the convent in 2002 and returned to her alma mater last August to pursue a PhD in literature.

Along with the Nashville Dominicans teaching or studying at UD, four more sisters of the order teach nearby at Mary Immaculate Catholic School in Farmers Branch.

Together, these seven Nashville Dominicans are housed in a temporary residence in Irving, a kind of makeshift convent. The proposed on-campus convent would house both the sisters at UD and those serving at Mary Immaculate.

“For the last eight years, we’ve been moving towards a more stable place of residence, like a convent proper, and a convent that would enable us to live our religious life more fully,” Sister Armour said. “To have the proximity to the university community will be a huge blessing… It will enable us to continue to steep our service in the contemplative life.”

Creating the convent 
For years, the University of Dallas has explored the idea of providing an on-campus convent for those Nashville Dominicans who serve at the university and in the greater Dallas community.

Although plans for building a convent were paused during COVID, the process has now resumed in earnest.

Currently, the university is in the early planning and fundraising stages of the project.

Preliminary renderings reveal a simple structure, consistent with the life of simplicity and community that the sisters embrace.

“It will contain a chapel that will enable the sisters to gather and serve guests for Mass and prayer. It will contain a relatively simple kitchen and a larger gathering area for when the sisters are inviting guests into the convent for conversation or other activities,” Sanford explained.

Additionally, the convent will include simple bedrooms, or “cells,” each equipped with a bed and a desk.

The convent will be located on campus, within walking distance of “lectures on campus, artistic performances, shows, the library,” Sanford said. He added, “Being on a campus [will afford] them the opportunity to walk and have engagements with the students, faculty, and staff at an even higher rate.”

In order to begin construction on the convent, the university must first fundraise. The fundraising goal is to raise $7.2 million, an amount that covers site preparation, construction, and other costs such as ongoing upkeep of the convent.

“We’ve got to do everything from the soil, connect the utilities, build the concept,” Sanford said. “At this point, we are trying to get the word out, inviting people to consider investing in this work.”

Once the funds are raised, or promised, Sanford said the project will likely take about nine to 12 months to complete.

“It is a beautiful effort of not just the UD community and our religious community but the wider Dallas community in support of this project,” Sister Armour said. “We rely so much on God’s providence manifest in the generosity of others, so we’re deeply grateful for all the people who are responding to God’s prompting to provide this gift. It’s a gift both for the campus and for us.”

Both Sanford and Sister Armour said that the convent will be a blessing for the UD community.

“The University of Dallas is a place that is alive with serious intellectual engagement, joy,” Sanford said, “I want these living, vivid examples of joyful discipleship on our campus, because it is a powerful inspiration for our students, faculty, and staff and inspiration for living a life that is both joyful and serious.”

Sister Armour said, “It will be, I think, mutually enriching for both the community and for our sisters. Primarily, as consecrated religious, we bring our consecrated life, our contemplative life, to the places where we’re sent… The convent will enable us to live our contemplative life more fully by all of those dimensions: prayer, silence, cloister. Those are what nourishes our contemplative life. And that, in turn, is what nourishes our apostolic activity. Our teaching flows from our prayer, and the convent being more properly designed as a convent will just enable us to live that contemplative dimension of our life more fully.”

After years of benefiting from the vibrancy, joy, and intellectual formation of the Nashville Dominicans, the University of Dallas community is eager to provide these women with a more permanent home—a place where their gifts will be appreciated and utilized.

“The life of faith is regularly under assault or is ignored as a serious option,” Sanford said. “We see the convent serves as a kind of powerful alternative vision for what life is all about.”