Marquette President Michael Lovell dies at 57, leaves legacy of love for campus, community
Marquette University President Michael Lovell died in Italy Sunday after a three-year battle with cancer and a decade at the helm of Wisconsin's largest private institution, the university announced. He was 57.
"President Lovell’s decade of leadership at Marquette was marked by a deep commitment to innovation, entrepreneurship, and community renewal and development — consistent with the university’s Catholic, Jesuit mission that animated him," a university statement said. "An entrepreneur at heart, President Lovell pushed Marquette and Milwaukee to ask what could be rather than settling for the status quo."
Lovell was the first lay president in the Jesuit school's 133-year history and deeply committed to his faith. He was recently in Rome on a Jesuit formation pilgrimmage with his wife, members of the Society of Jesus and the university's Board of Trustees when he became sick. He was transported to a hospital in Rome.
Lovell revealed he was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, in September 2021. He began chemotherapy shortly after he announced his diagnosis and continued working, even through the monumental challenge of running a 12,000-student university through the COVID-19 pandemic.
"When you don't know how much time you have left, you want your days to be impactful and you want to do things that you love," Lovell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2022. "And so you ask me, why do I want to work? Well, you know, there are days that are hard, to be honest with you, and the last few years weren't easy, but I love being on this campus. I love being in our community."
Michael Lovell's ties to Milwaukee began at UW-Milwaukee
Leading Marquette was never Lovell's plan.
He arrived to Milwaukee in 2008 to lead the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's College of Engineering and Applied Science. By 2010, Lovell was promoted to interim UWM chancellor. By 2011, he had the permanent position.
In 2014, Marquette needed a new leader. Lovell talked with the interim president at the time, Fr. Robert A. Wild, about the opportunity.
"It became clear to me I was called to Milwaukee six years ago to become Marquette's president," Lovell said during his 2014 introductory news conference. "It was never really my plan, but I'm just glad I decided to follow it."
Just a few years into leading UWM, Lovell emailed the campus community his goodbye.
"I know that many of you will be surprised by my decision," he wrote. "Those closest to me, however, know how important my Catholic faith is in my life, and having the ability to integrate my religious life with my professional life is something that I always wanted to do in my career."
Mark Mone replaced Lovell as UWM chancellor. The two talked regularly and collaborated together on partnerships. Their friendship grew even stronger when Mone, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2020, showed up at Lovell's doorstep. He'd heard about Lovell's diagnosis and came armed with lozenges, a cookbook and a cap to keep his head warm after chemo.
It was another shared experience bonding together the leaders of Milwaukee's two largest universities.
"Mike’s impact on UWM, Marquette and the greater Milwaukee community was immense, and so is the grief we all feel upon learning of his loss," Mone said in a statement. "We will forever admire his dedication to improving lives through education and the selflessness with which he served so many."
Lovell's love of running led to student running group
Lovell was always on the go. Nonstop.
But if someone needed to track him down in his early years as Marquette president, they could find him at the statue in front of St. Joan of Arc Chapel in the center of campus almost every Tuesday and Thursday. That's where Lovell and his student running group met before they pounded the pavement.
“Some of the best ideas I have occur when I am running,” Lovell told the Journal Sentinel in 2015. “But it also makes me accessible to people. I’m a believer that when you lead, you have to be very present. It’s very important to me to have that.”
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Throughout Lovell's presidency, he attended hundreds of campus events each year, Marquette officials said. He taught a Product Realization class several times, saying he gained great energy from interacting with students and faculty.
Even after Lovell's cancer diagnosis, his passion for the job never dimmed.
"He was at every event and in every university meeting over the past several years where I would have at all even remotely expected a president to be in attendance," said Joseph Kearney, dean of the Marquette University Law School. "Perhaps some of those were scheduled around his treatment. He didn't make a show of that, but his energy for his work continued during the past couple of years, and that, too, was inspiring."
Lovell expanded partnerships, increased research
Kearney also admired Lovell's enthusiasm for partnerships.
Marquette, UWM and Northwestern Mutual established the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute in 2018 to advance Milwaukee as a hub for technology, research, business and talent development. The universities also partnered with Johnson Controls to address some of the city's most pressing problems, such as poverty.
Marquette helped form the Near West Side Partners nonprofit, which helps revitalize and sustain business and residential areas near campus. Other partners include Advocate Aurora Health, Harley-Davidson, Molson Coors and the Potawatomi Business Development Corp.
"He very much believed in the proposition, or the idea, that together the region could combine and do much greater things than any one institution of higher education could do itself," Kearney said.
Lovell and his wife, Amy, were active in the community in a number of areas, including addressing Milwaukee's epidemic of psychological trauma. The Lovells call their effort SWIM — Scaling Wellness In Milwaukee.
“We’ve heard over and over again from the community — the only way we will move the needle is if we actually go into the communities themselves and have a presence there and work with trusted partners within the community,” Lovell told the Journal Sentinel in 2019.
Budget deficits, support for students of color were among Lovell's challenges
Other accomplishments, which Marquette recently highlighted in its alumni magazine:
Annual research spending was around $25 million when Lovell set an ambitious goal in 2015 to double it. Marquette is on track to reach that goal in the next one to two years.
The near-completion of a campus master plan. Among the major projects: McCormick Hall is gone, replaced by The Commons. The business college has new digs. The College of Nursing is on its way to expand.
Debuting in 2017, the 707 Hub has become a headquarters of student innovation and entrepreneurship.
A fundraising campaign that met its $750 million goal.
Lovell’s time at Marquette wasn’t without challenges. The university, like most others across the Midwest, faces demographic headwinds and budget pressures.
Faculty and staff objected to Lovell laying off 39 employees in 2021 as part of an effort to “right-size” the university. More recently, his plan to cut $31 million over the next seven years drew substantial pushback from staff who decried what they saw as a lack of transparency.
Campus climate also drew concern. As racial justice protests swept the country in 2020, Marquette students of color demanded more campus support. The university agreed to fund a Black student cultural center, hire Black mental health counselors and offer 40 new full-ride scholarships for Milwaukee Public Schools graduates.
Two years later, students of color disrupted a freshman welcome event to protest what they saw as a lack of resources for students of color. Marquette sanctioned the students, a move that outraged some members of the campus community who saw the punishment as missing the larger point students were trying to make.
Lovell reflected on diagnosis as three-year mark approached
In Lovell's last campus-wide address this past winter, he said he was in his 22nd round of chemotherapy.
"Some days are harder than others," he said, throwing in a joke: "This round of treatment, I get to keep my hair."
In a more recent interview with the Marquette Wire, the student newspaper, Lovell said his doctors had initially predicted he had just two years to live.
“As my doctor says, ‘It doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere soon,'” Lovell said in April.
The diagnosis strengthened Lovell's relationship with God, he told the Wire. It made him better appreciate birthdays. And it prompted him to dust off his bucket list.
Lovell and his wife had planned to travel to Portugal this month to walk the El Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimmage route leading to the shrine of the apostle James. Next month, he had planned to participate in Milwaukee's 5K “Race to Cure Sarcoma."
Lovell is survived by Amy and four children. Planning for a campus prayer vigil is underway. Funeral arrangements will be shared at today.marquette.edu.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Marquette President Michael Lovell dies of cancer at 57
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