President's Report 2008

president and chief executive officer, lighthouse international member, villanova university board of trustees

Villanova has a 95% freshman to sophomore retention rate

In the fall of 1963, when Tara Cortes, Ph.D., R.N., began her studies at Villanova’s College of Nursing, “a liberal arts-educated nurse was really rare,” she recalled.

Villanova was not yet coed, and the 40 freshman nursing students lived in a convent in Bryn Mawr. “Every morning at 7: 30 a.m., a yellow school bus would pick us up and take us to the campus for our classes. At 5 p.m., it picked us up outside the quad for the return trip.”

Today, the College of Nursing is home to more than 700 undergraduate and graduate nursing students, who take classes in the new Driscoll Hall, a state-of-the-art 75,500 square foot building. Yet while its home is bigger and more sophisticated, the College’s liberal arts foundation and emphasis on leadership, responsibility and accountability has not changed.

For Dr. Cortes, the College’s teachings and the leadership skills she learned there have loomed large throughout her distinguished 40-year career in health care.

“Villanova was one of a handful of colleges in the nation at that time to offer a B.S.N. in nursing, and the preparation we received was absolutely amazing.”

Cortes is currently president and CEO of Lighthouse International, a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting vision loss. As head of a large global nonprofit, Cortes believes leadership today is about building partnerships, community and trust—and total transparency.

“When you look at how leadership has evolved over the past 40 years, the hierarchical structure is gone and leadership today is inclusive. You build a team with the best people you can find and use them to help make decisions and empower them to do their jobs. This has been my leadership style throughout my career.”

Her career highlights include being named a fellow in the highly competitive Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow program, her appointment by New York’s governor to the Executive Board for New York State’s Commission for the Blind and Visually Handicapped and her appointment to the Board of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. Cortes has also been a member of the Villanova University Board of Trustees for the past eight years.

Today, when she visits campus, she is proud of the evolution of the College of Nursing —and of the University itself—and grateful for her Villanova education.

“The value system Villanova instilled in me has had a tremendous influence on my entire life,” she said. “Veritas, unitas, caritas — truth, unity and love—have molded my behavior throughout my life and career.”