1-877-206-4279
Reflections from a new member of the Board of Visitors at the Tim and Steph Busch School of Business, The Catholic University of America
When I first walked the halls of the Busch School of Business, I felt something I had not felt at many of the institutions I have known across a long career in business, economics, entrepreneurship and government. It was a sense that the people here were building something whole; an education that forms the whole person, not just the résumé. I have now joined the Busch School’s Board of Visitors, and I want to share why.
A Few Words on Where I Come From
I earned my Ph.D. at the London School of Economics, studying under world-class mentors, such as, Professor Leslie Hannah in economics and history. I later served on the faculty at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for 17 years being mentored by Ian MacMillan, known for writing more Harvard Business School Press books and Harvard Business Review articles ever, where I taught corporate venturing and entrepreneurial value creation with a focus on social entrepreneurship. The signature entrepreneurship course I built carried a deliberately provocative sub-title: How to Make $100 Million and Give It Away. The premise was simple but demanding; that wealth creation and generosity are not opposites, that building an enterprise of real value and using it to lift others up are two halves of the same vocation.
That conviction is exactly what drew me to the Busch School. I have spent my academic and business career around brilliant, ambitious students and business leaders. What I had rarely seen, until I met the leaders of Catholic University of America, was an institution that placed helping others and being extraordinary yourself in the same sentence and meant both equally.
A Center to Their Lives
So much of contemporary higher education delivers extraordinary technical training and superb tools, yet leaves a vacuum at the center. Students graduate fluent in spreadsheets and algorithms but adrift on the questions that matter most: What is my Purpose? Who am I? What is worth building? Whom do I serve? What struck me about the Busch School is that it refuses to accept that vacuum. It gives students a Purposed-Centered perspective.
The Busch School describes its mission as transforming the world of business into one that places the dignity of the human being at the center; business conducted both for persons and for profit. In practice, that means students are formed across every dimension: the mental discipline of rigorous academics, the physical discipline of a vibrant campus and athletic life, and, too often missing elsewhere; the spiritual discipline that orders the other two. Mind, body, and spirit, with a coherent set of core values holding them together.
I have come to believe that this third dimension is not a soft add-on. It is the load-bearing wall. President Peter Kilpatrick; himself a distinguished chemical engineer with more than 100 published articles and a dozen patents, who came to the Catholic faith as an adult; speaks often about reintegrating the disciplines so that a student studying engineering or finance understands the grander context in which that knowledge lives. That is what a center does. It gives technical mastery somewhere to point.
Leadership and Collaboration Unlike Anywhere Else
The leadership culture at the Busch School is, in my experience, unsurpassed. From President Kilpatrick to Dean Andrew Abela and the school’s deans, faculty, and fellow board members, I encountered a genuinely complementary effort; people striving for their own excellence while actively working to help others succeed. People listen here. They support your personal growth, not as a transaction, but for the betterment of yourself and of the students.
This is not how most universities operate, and it is especially rare at business schools, where the prevailing ethos too often treats ambition and generosity as a trade-off. At Busch, students learn from day one how to help others while becoming outstanding themselves. It is a remarkable thing to watch a culture teach confidence and humility at the same time; to tell a young person, in effect: Be confident. Be extraordinary. And lift others as you climb.
For me, that ethic has a personal resonance. As a Knight of the Order of Malta, I have committed myself to the Order’s ancient charge; the defense of the faith and the service of the poor and the sick, tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum. The Busch School’s commitment to being successful and helping others maps almost perfectly onto that vow. It is one of the reasons I felt so immediately at home here. The same impulse that animates the Order; that excellence is for service, animates this Busch school.
The Programs: A Trajectory I Have Not Seen Before
The Busch School is accredited by AACSB International, a distinction held by only a small fraction of business schools worldwide, and it has been recognized by Poets & Quants as a top-ranked undergraduate program. Its accounting graduates rank among the highest-earning in the nation. But the rankings are downstream of something deeper: a set of programs on a genuinely upward trajectory.
The school is organized around these academic areas and undergraduate programs:
- Accounting — a B.S. in Accounting with a national reputation for graduate salary outcomes and CPA preparation.
- Finance — anchored by the Forlenza Finance Lab, covering financial management, investment analysis, corporate finance, and financial modeling.
- Entrepreneurship — built around the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship, with courses from The Vocation of Business to VentureLab, venture capital, and family enterprise.
- Marketing — discussion-based and relationship-driven, with graduates recruited by major brands.
- Sales — a distinctive program connecting students with professional sales mentors, recruiters, and industry conferences.
- International Business — truly global, with a required abroad experience, a modern-language minor, 200+ study-abroad programs, and Catholic University’s own campus in Rome.
- Strategy, Management, and Operations — leadership, organizational behavior, and operations, with tracks in strategy and human resources.
- Markets and Political Economy / Social Research — Catholic social thought meeting economics, game theory, and the moral foundations of markets.
Each of these programs is on a path I have not seen before; rigorous, ethically grounded, and oriented toward launching people and ventures into the world ready to do good and do well.
What I’m Most Excited to Help Further Build: Management & Technology Program
If there is one area where I see extraordinary potential, it is a Management & Technology pathway; pairing the hard sciences and engineering with management and venture-building skills, so that students who major in physics, chemistry, or engineering graduate able not just to invent, but to launch.
These M&T students earn two full degrees concurrently. What makes the M&T model powerful is integration. Beyond the standalone Busch and Engineering coursework, M&T students take dedicated integration courses. The pedagogy is built around innovation, entrepreneurship, and experiential learning, with world-class faculty and business leaders. I believe the Busch School with its principled-entrepreneurship DNA, its VentureLab and Ciocca Center, and the deep technical strength across Catholic University’s School of Engineering and its sciences; is positioned to build something in this spirit: an explicit ethical and spiritual center. Imagine engineers and scientists trained to build commercially viable technology and formed to ask whom that technology serves. That is the kind of leader the world needs, and it is the kind of leader I want to help mentor.
Why This Matters Now
The Catholic University of America is the national university of the Catholic Church, founded by Pope Leo XIII and the U.S. bishops in 1887. Under President Kilpatrick’s leadership, it has set an ambitious course; including new initiatives at the frontier of artificial intelligence and ethics to become a world-class leader in education, innovation, technology, and the moral questions those raise. As Kilpatrick has put it, academic excellence and fidelity to the mission are not competing goals; they are the foundation of true intellectual and societal leadership. The Busch School sits at the heart of that platform, where academics, business, and government meet in the nation’s capital.
Meeting these leaders, it became very clear how good it is to be among people who stress helping others even as they strive for their own success. CUA and the Busch School offer a rare environment for genuine personal growth; a place to excel, and a place for someone like me to mentor young leaders who already have the right mindset.
I am proud and humbled to join the Board of Visitors, and I am immersed in this terrific culture of learning and effectiveness. To the students reading this, let me leave you with what the Busch School itself teaches from day one:
Be confident with the Holy Spirit’s Direction. Be extraordinary. And Give It All Away.
The author is Managing Partner of Pierpont Group and CEO of Cambridge Health. Dr. Terrence LaPier holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, an AMP from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, his Bachelors is from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and he is a Babson Entrepreneurship Teaching Fellow. He served on the faculty of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania for 17 years teaching entrepreneurial value creation with a focus on social entrepreneurship, and is a Knight of the Order of Malta. He is a Trustee of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Hospital Sibley Foundation. He is a new member of the Board of Visitors of the Tim and Steph Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America. Read More at LinkedIn.