Thomas Baier

Still not sure what he wanted to do with his life, Tom made a one-year commitment to the Jesuit Volunteer program.

• Intrigued by the south, he joined a community of four male and two female volunteers in Mid-City New Orleans in August 1987.
• He worked in the Community Center of Holy Ghost parish uptown, dealing primarily with people in the Magnolia Housing Project.

Having enjoyed his year in the Crescent City, Tom returned after a three-month sojourn to Europe.

• He worked three years for Volunteers of America as a Case Manager for individuals with chronic mental illness.
• During that time, he took classes in Religious Studies at Loyola.
• He married a Baton Rouge girl whom he had actually met within days to moving to New Orleans with the Jesuit Volunteers. However, they didn't begin dating until she finished LSU Medical School in psychiatry. In his job with VOA, he dealt with some of the same patients she was seeing.
• Shortly after their marriage, Tom and Margaret spent a year in New Zealand where she helped that nation transition from its socialized medical system. He worked in a community center doing work similar to what he did as a Jesuit Volunteer.

Back in New Orleans, she resumed her position at LSU, and he started his first teaching job.

• He sent his resumé to the Archdiocesan Office of Education in hopes of obtaining a position as a religion teacher.
• One of the first schools to contact him was Ursuline Academy. Touring the school, he noted the day care center for pre-K children of faculty members. When he told his pregnant wife about it, she told him to take the job.
• In his eleven years at Ursuline, all three of their sons benefitted from the day care program until they started at Holy Name of Jesus school.
• Tom enjoyed teaching religion at a relatively small school. However, when his youngest son started Holy Name, he began thinking about making a change, but Katrina delayed his move. He become Religion Department Chair and, after the storm, spent his last two years there as Campus Minister.

Tom applied to both Brother Martin and Jesuit.

• Brother Martin called right away to invite him for an interview.
• Tom felt right at home on Elysian Fields and began teaching religion for the 2008-9 school year.
• He joined the Campus Ministry team right away, moving to Associate Campus Minister last year before swapping places with Judy Stewart for this school year. She now teaches the senior Religion classes that Tom covered last year.

Adjusting to a much larger school took some time..

• "At Ursuline, each religion teacher taught an entire grade level. So at graduation, you knew every girl."
• He quickly learned that some things that work well with girls don't work with boys.
• "At retreats, the girls love to share and talk about themselves. In fact, some share too much. You have to have many boxes of tissues, especially on the senior retreat. They hug and cry a lot."

Tom has implemented changes in Brother Martin's retreats based on the Campus Ministry team's evaluation of the program at the end of last school year.

• The theme of the retreats is the charism of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. Each grade level focuses on one of the hopes we have for our graduates.
• While the seniors continue to go to the Episcopal Retreat Center in Robert LA, the locations of the other retreats have changed.
• All grades now make their Day of Recollection off-campus. The 7th grade went to St. Joseph's Abbey on the northshore while 8th through 11th graders have gone to St. Stanislaus in Bay St. Louis MS.
• A highlight of the Stanislaus experience has been prayer services in small groups at the brothers' cemetery where men the students have heard about, such as Brother Martin and Brother Collin, are buried.
• Next year's program will be developed after this year's experience is evaluated in May. But not all classes will return to Bay St. Louis.
• The service program continues to play a major role in students' religious formation. "The service experience, especially at the junior level, provides experiences the students would never have otherwise."

Brother Louis explains Prayer Service at Brothers' Cemetery in Bay St. Louis