National Football Foundation

Donald Monan entered the Society of Jesus in 1942 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1955. Over the next 17 years, Father Monan held positions as Philosophy professor, Academic Dean and Vice President at Le Moyne College in New York. In 1972, he became the president of Boston College and held that post for 24 years, giving him the longest presidential tenure in the school’s history. He assumed the newly created role of Chancellor in 1996, and continues in that role today.

Father Monan has received more than a dozen honorary doctoral degrees from institutions ranging from Harvard and Boston College to the National University of Ireland. He is the former chairman of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts. He also served as a director of the Bank of Boston from 1976-96, as interim president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities from 1996-97, board member of the Naval Academy Endowment Trust, the Yawkey Foundation, and recently chaired a Visiting Committee on Management in the Courts at the request of the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Father Monan placed a major importance on academics for student-athletes, and as a result, Boston College is one of the leading Division I schools in graduating its scholarship players. In 1992, the College Football Association named Boston College the co-winner of its Academic Achievement Award for graduating within five years all of its scholarship players who arrived in 1986.

Father Monan was inducted into the Boston College Varsity Club Athletic Hall of Fame in 1985. He was also a founding president of the Big East Conference and a member of the First Presidents’ Commission of the NCAA.