The Distinguished Alumni Award is given to an alumnus of The Saint Paul Seminary who has lived an exemplary life as a leader in the Church. We have two 2026 recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award: Bishop Andrew Cozzens and Dr. Robert Kennedy. The following is an interview with Dr. Robert Kennedy:
Nell O’Leary Alt, JD: Dr. Kennedy, you have a fantastic story of innovation, creativity, and service to the local church. You also have the distinctive honor of being our very first lay graduate student here at The Saint Paul Seminary in 1972. Please share a little about your professional journey and story at The Saint Paul Seminary.
Dr. Robert Kennedy: I was an undergraduate philosophy major at St. Thomas. My intention had been to go to law school, but I became more interested in philosophy and wanted to do graduate work in that field. One of my professors said, “Well, maybe here’s a thought. Maybe if you did a master’s degree locally, you’d have a better chance of getting a fellowship to work on your doctorate.” I talked to the seminary. When I was first a student here, the staff was one full-time fellow who sort of was a business manager and did odds and ends. The rector had a full-time secretary. The vice rector had a part-time secretary, and that was the staff. And there were something in excess of a hundred seminarians.
Nell: We’ve grown in staffing since then quite a bit! But they hadn’t had a lay graduate student before and it sounds like there was some trepidation, but then you were admitted! When did you start and whom did you study with?
Dr. Kennedy: I started here in the fall of ‘72. Wow. At the time, there was a pre-semester for all the first-year people. As I recall, we had to do a course in scripture, a course in church history, and a course in theology. The track I had planned to be on was the theology track. But the scripture professor I had was Jerome Quinn, and it was so clear to me that he was very different from anyone else! Dr. Quinn was one of the greatest teachers that I have had, and he actually became a good friend.
Nell: What did you do after the Masters in Theology?
Dr. Kennedy: For a time, I was a religious education director at a couple of local parishes. Later, after Barbara and I were married, I went into real estate sales. I did that for about five years. During that time, I was offered a part-time teaching position at the University of Wisconsin in Menominee. I would commute over there a couple afternoons a week to teach philosophy. A year or so after that started, I was offered a limited term appointment with the philosophy department at UST. For several years, I was driving over to Wisconsin, I was teaching at UST, and I was selling real estate full-time. I was about to enroll in law school but we decided to try one more thing before I went down that path. In the end, Barbara and I moved to South Bend with our four small daughters where I worked on my doctorate at Notre Dame. I was fortunate there to work with Ralph McInerny, who directed my dissertation in the Medieval Institute. I also worked with Germain Grisez doing research for his books on moral theology. He would write his manuscripts, and then I’d edit all the footnotes on Scripture and patristics. Germain was an extraordinary guy, very intense but humble in his own way.
Nell: What an extraordinary number of years at Notre Dame. Where did you go next?
Dr. Kennedy: For several years, I worked at the chancery in Duluth. After three years, I was invited to take a position at St. Thomas in the Department of Business. The Department was growing and Msgr Murphy, the president,was keen on doing more with professional ethics. Since I had worked for years with Grisez, had a doctorate from Notre Dame, and about ten years of experience in sales and management, he approached me, “Would you consider taking a position with us?” I wound up in the department of management at St. Thomas for about seventeen years.
Later in that period, we were pulling together the program in Catholic Studies, and I had been involved a bit in the beginnings of it. When we finally formed the department, which was somewhere around 2002, I was invited to take a position in the department. For a time, I had a joint appointment in Business and was teaching in both areas. Then in 2005, we needed a new chair and nobody else was available, so I became chair of the department.
Nell: Never a dull moment! Can you share about your involvement with the law school as well?
Dr. Kennedy: We decided to establish a joint program between Catholic Studies and the School of Law. Tom Berg, one of the law professors, and I were the founding directors of the Terence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy. So, for a while, I was directing a program in the Law School, I was still teaching courses in what had become the College of Business, and I was chair of the Department of Catholic Studies. Now things are quieter and I’m simply teaching full-time at Catholic Studies.
Nell: I love this through-line of the story of Our Lord guiding you to so many amazing ways of sharing your gifts and talents! Thank you for sharing, Dr. Kennedy. We’re so proud to have been a part of your formation from the beginning!