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Twenty years ago the Benedictine women of the Abbey of Regina Laudis faced a crossroads. In addition to their prayers throughout each day, the 40 nuns also worked the land, tending to farm animals, growing vegetables, producing dairy products and making crafts on the bucolic 400-acre site in Bethlehem, Conn. Members of that community decided a more professional approach to operating the farm was needed if it was to be sustainable for the future.
Archbishop of Hartford John Whealon gave permission for members of the order to embark on an educational pilgrimage. It was not the first time cloistered nuns had left Regina Laudis in search of knowledge. More than a decade before, the abbey sent two nuns to Michigan State University to earn a master’s degree in fine arts, and another to study horticulture theory.
Which is why on a snowy December day in 1986, Robert Milvae, UConn associate professor of animal science, received a telephone call from the admissions office asking if he would meet with some prospective students. To his surprise, he found four women dressed in black and white habits waiting for him.
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| Mother Augusta Collins, ’00 Ph.D. plant science/agronomy. |
“I took them on a campus tour, and we chatted about graduate school,” recalls Milvae (Mother Telchilde Hinckley’s Ph.D. advisor). The nuns wanted to enroll in agricultural science programs, but Mother Augusta Collins ’00 Ph.D., Mother Telchilde Hinckley ’00 Ph.D., Mother Noella Marcellino’03 Ph.D. and Mother Jeanne-Yolaine Mallet ’92 M.S. had majored in arts and humanities during their undergraduate days, not science. To meet the requirements for their proposed studies and to ease their transition into rigorous scientific programs, Milvae recommended that they first complete several non-degree courses.
So in 1987 the foursome began an educational journey leading to doctoral degrees in plant science/agronomy for Mother Augusta, in animal science/reproductive physiology for Mother Telchilde, in molecular and cell biology/microbiology for Mother Noella Marcellino, and a master’s degree in plant science/ weed ecology for Mother Jeanne-Yolaine, who returned to France last summer to live in a monastery in her native country. Along the way they earned accolades and awards, formed friendships with UConn faculty and forged enduring ties with the University.
“These women are remarkable,” says James Bobbitt, professor emeritus of organic chemistry, who taught two of the nuns and has been the abbey’s wine-making advisor since retiring from UConn in 1992. “They all had arts backgrounds and all became very accomplished scientists.”
The women had been drawn to the abbey as members of its lay community during the turbulence of the early 1970s, a time of political protests and national strife over the war in Vietnam and the social activism of the civil rights movement.
“We were disillusioned and driven to find meaning,” says Mother Telchilde about how as young women they each became part of the lay community that worked with the abbey. As they spent more time at the abbey, they were drawn to a religious life inside the Benedictine cloister, where rituals include singing Gregorian chants seven times a day.
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| Mother Telchilde Hinckley, ’00 Ph.D. animal science/reproductive physiology. |
Each nun works in an area she enjoys. Mother Telchilde’s enjoyment of working with farm animals sparked an interest in preserving heritage breeds. Intrigued by the intricacies of chant, Mother Noella learned to sing and teach the ancient Latin songs. She also milked cows and made butter, ice cream and cheese, which became her specialty after a visiting French cheese master taught her to produce a delectable Saint Nectaire-type cheese from raw milk. Mother Augusta has a penchant for outdoor work, a talent for operating farm machinery and an interest in sustainable land management. Mother Jeanne-Yolaine delights in gardening.
“It was evident that if we were going to keep the farm going into the future, we would need to have some professional agricultural credentials,” says Mother Augusta. The agriculture and microbiology programs at UConn were the natural choice for pursing their studies.
“We are a community that encourages professionalism,” Mother Noella says, noting that among those in the order are two physicians and three lawyers.
“For most of our first year we crammed the four of us into a Chevy Nova,” Mother Telchilde says, adding they would stop at a Waterbury church to attend mass during the 90-minute ride to UConn’s main campus. The communal commute became impractical as the nuns delved more into their doctoral research projects. As they progressed in their studies and began to need more time doing research in laboratories on campus, they each would occasionally spend the night in the guest quarters at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Storrs.
“It was really hard,” Mother Noella says of their studies noting that the discipline and contemplative focus of their monastic life was good preparation for doctoral research. Still, each struggled to balance a growing educational workload with community responsibilities in the abbey. However with the unfailing support of their community the three doctoral candidates eventually would become widely recognized for their accomplishments.
Mother Augusta developed a methodology to predict nitrogen requirements that are needed to fertilize grassland for optimal growth at the least possible risk to the environment. Her research papers won awards from the Northeastern Society of Agronomy, and her doctoral thesis was published in the society’s Agronomy Journal, the discipline’s most prestigious research publication. Her methodology has been adopted by others in the field. Today Mother Augusta is responsible for the abbey’s grass-fed beef herd and oversees more than 20 pastures for grazing and haymaking.
Mother Telchilde wanted to gain a deeper understanding of animal reproductive physiology. Her doctoral research focused on a hormone that is critical to maintaining pregnancy in livestock, and it included a 15-day research trip to Ireland, sponsored by a scientific exchange program. Today, she uses that knowledge to oversee livestock management and health programs at Regina Laudis, as well as the abbey dairy.
Mother Noella took introductory sciences courses at UConn’s campus in Waterbury. During a visit to the abbey’s cheese cellar, organic chemistry professor Nina Stein suggested that she focus her research on the microbiology of cheese ripening. Under the direction of her Ph.D. advisor, David Benson, Mother Noella used an electron microscope to study the populations of fungi and bacteria which developed on the surface of the abbey cheese. She won a Fulbright scholarship to France to collect native strains of fungi from traditional cheese caves and stayed another three years, analyzing the samples on a grant from the French government. Her studies, which suggested that the diversity of Geotrichum candidum may contribute to the variety of flavors in French cheese, brought her fame far beyond the abbey and worldwide media attention, including a documentary titled The Cheese Nun.
The French government honored Mother Noella in 2003 with a French Food Spirit Award. She also won the 2004 International Academy of Gastronomy’s Grand Prix de la Science de l’Alimentation, given to an institution or person “responsible for contributing to the progress of food sciences at an international level.”
The nuns’ educational odyssey has produced an ongoing relationship between the Abbey of Regina Laudis and UConn that is mutually beneficial, says Cameron Faustman, associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Several professors have taken students on field trips to the abbey, including Sheila Andrew, UConn extension dairy specialist and associate professor of animal science, and Faustman, who teaches students about meat processing, using beef, lamb and pork carcasses from the abbey’s farm.
Mother Telchilde believes the “openness and accessibility” of the UConn faculty enabled the nuns to achieve their educational goals. “We began to feel that the campus was an extension of the monastery,” she says.
Faustman says that although their religious attire could have set them apart from their fellow students, the nuns’ presence instead helped other students. “Anytime you get non-traditional students, who have done other things, they tend to be highly motivated and not afraid to ask questions,” he says. “They helped facilitate greater learning for other students.”
As a result of their studies, says Derek Allinson, professor emeritus of agronomy who served as doctoral advisor to Mother Augusta, the abbey now has highly skilled and trained professionals “who can develop their land in an ecologically sound way that’s important to them.”
Most important, the lofty goal set by the community of the Abbey of Regina Laudis 20 years ago to ensure the sustainability of their farm has been accomplished. After returning from a student field trip to the abbey in 2002, Sandy L. Bushmich, associate professor of pathobiology and veterinary science, wrote to Mother Abbess David Serna and Mother Prioress Dolores Hart, the authorities of the community, and noted: “I can say from a veterinarian’s viewpoint that the farm I saw . . . is more environmentally sound and [the] herd healthier than it was in the early ’90s when I last visited . . . I am proud that UConn has played a small role in the evolution of the farm.”