From left: Edgewood College President Dan Carey, Professor Bob Tarrell, Sister Mary Ellen Gevelinger (holding the Mazzuchelli Medallion), and Sister Mary Howard Johnstone.

Sinsinawa Dominicans
Edgewood College honors sisters, professor

Edgewood College, Madison, Wisconsin, held its 23rd Annual Heritage Celebration Nov. 5 on campus at St. Joseph Chapel. The two recipients of this year’s Mazzuchelli Medallion were Art Professor Bob Tarrell and the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa. They were awarded for cultivating personal, professional, intellectual, and spiritual resources to empower others and for a commitment to teaching and preaching through the arts.

Sister Priscilla Wood, OP, preached at the ceremony, and Sister Mary Howard Johnstone, OP, accepted the Mazzuchelli Medallion on behalf of the congregation. “I wish to express our deep gratitude to you, the Edgewood staff, faculty, and students, to the planners of this event, and the selection committee,” said Sister Mary Howard. “We are honored and humbled to receive this significant recognition and prized award. We are doubly honored to share this evening and recognition with Bob Tarrell. I had the opportunity to read some student comments about Bob, and there is no doubt that Samuel Mazzuchelli and Stephanie Stauder [OP, 1918–2010] and Liz Devine [OP, 1933–1996] who hired Bob years ago would have made the same choice as the selection committee.”

Sister Mary Howard continued, “We gave thanks to Samuel Mazzuchelli for assuring that the arts would always be a requirement of the core curriculum of the Sinsinawa Dominican congregation. … We know of Nona McGreal’s [OP] dream for an arts building here at Edgewood. … The understanding that sisters are Dominican preachers when they are poets, pianists, composers, sculptors, artists of all media—along with teachers of facts and theories—has been and continues to be part of our heritage.”

Edgewood College is a sponsored ministry of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa.