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An $11 million gift from Elizabeth and Robert McKay ‘55 will provide more students the chance to take part in experiential learning opportunities.

Longtime Holy Cross supporters Elizabeth “Liz” and Robert J. “Bob” McKay ’55 are donating $11 million to the College — including one of the largest estate bequest commitments in its history — to support financial aid-endowed scholarships, emergency funding for students in financial distress and access to experiential learning.

The couple is furthering their support for the existing Elizabeth and Robert McKay ’55 Family Scholarship, which provides need-based scholarships for students from Bob’s hometown of Waterbury, Connecticut, and the surrounding area. They are also endowing two new, transformational resources: the Wetzel McKay Emergency Fund and the McKay Opportunity Fund.

“These two initiatives are very dear to our hearts,” Bob McKay said. “We don’t have grandchildren; the Holy Cross kids are our grandchildren.”

The Wetzel McKay Emergency Fund will support any student at the College facing unforeseen needs not covered by financial aid, from winter clothing and transportation home to graduate school application fees. The McKays named the fund in honor of Bob’s lifelong friend and Holy Cross roommate, the late Rev. Edward A. Wetzel ’55.

“The College is humbled and grateful that Liz and Bob McKay have chosen once again to make a significant investment in Holy Cross,” said President Vincent D. Rougeau. “The new McKay funds, coupled with the family’s existing scholarship, will enable our most vulnerable students to afford Holy Cross and participate fully in the vibrant academic and extracurricular life of the College. The gift respects the dignity of every student who has financial need and eliminates hidden barriers to success.”

In establishing this fund, the McKays also took inspiration from the legacy of the late Joseph “Joe” Reilly ’55, a longtime leader of the Bishop Healy Committee at Holy Cross. Reilly often turned to fellow members of the class of 1955, such as the McKays, to raise emergency funds and provide mentorship for the College’s students of color.

With the new McKay Opportunity Fund, the couple wants to expand access and broaden involvement for students who may be financially unable to participate in career-enriching Holy Cross experiences, such as study abroad, semesters away, summer academic research and internships.

“Holy Cross has evolved into an even better school than it was when I was there — the academic quality for the students is just sensational,” Bob McKay said. “And it’s the continuing integration of the Jesuit tradition — the ethics, the morality, the spirituality — that, even for students who are not Catholic, is a virtue and is valuable. This is something that is unusual in today’s world.”

“It’s about giving people the opportunity to really make a difference,” Liz McKay said. “It’s so important.”

Abraham Verghese, left, and Rev. Philip L. Boroughs, S.J. will be awarded honorary degrees during the 2022 Holy Cross Commencement ceremony.

Acclaimed writer and physician Abraham Verghese will address this year’s graduates during the College of the Holy Cross Commencement ceremonies on Friday, May 27, at 10:30 a.m. at the DCU Center in Worcester. This year’s commencement marks the College’s 176th graduating class.

An infectious disease physician, best-selling author and popular speaker, Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University. He is known for his advocacy for the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and for the value of the discerning bedside exam as a complement to and a way of more judiciously using expensive diagnostic technology.

Verghese began his medical training in his native Ethiopia, but when his education was interrupted during the civil unrest there, he moved to the United States with his family. He worked in the U.S. as an orderly for a year before completing his medical studies at the Madras Medical College, Madras, India. He finished his infectious diseases fellowship at Boston University’s School of Medicine.

Verghese’s early years as an orderly, then as a physician caring for patients with AIDS at the dawn of that epidemic, were transformative and informed his approach to medicine and his writing of both fiction and non-fiction.

He served on the faculty of East Tennessee State University, the University of Iowa, Texas Tech University, and the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, before coming to Stanford in 2007. Verghese is the author of “My Own Country,” a 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, and a Time Magazine Best Book of the Year, that was also made into a movie directed by Mira Nair “The Tennis Partner,” a New York Times Notable Book; and, most recently, the novel “Cutting for Stone,” which spent a year on the New York Times bestseller list and was picked as one of Amazon’s “A Hundred Books To Read in a Lifetime.”

He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, and in 2016, President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Verghese’s essays and short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere.

Verghese will be given an honorary degree during Commencement. The College will also award an honorary degree to Rev. Philip L. Boroughs, S.J., the 32nd president of Holy Cross, a role he held from 2012-2021.

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Boroughs earned his B.A. from Gonzaga University, in Spokane, Washington and received a Master of Divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology (Chicago). He later went on to receive a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, CA and a Ph.D. in Christian Spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, CA).

During Boroughs’ tenure as president, Holy Cross successfully completed a $420 million capital campaign, which led to a dramatic expansion to the Luth Athletic Complex and the construction of the Joyce Contemplative Center, the Joanne Luth Recreation and Wellness Center and the soon to be completed Prior Performing Arts Center. A second campaign launched under Boroughs’ leadership, the Hope and Access campaign, has raised more than $40 million for need-based financial aid.

The College also instituted new academic initiatives, including the J.D. Power Center for Liberal Arts in the World, Arts Transcending Borders, and the Scholarship in Action program, which funds faculty research in Worcester.

Boroughs also led efforts to make Holy Cross a more diverse, inclusive campus. During his tenure, the College created the Office of International Students and joined the American Talent Initiative, which seeks to expand access for low-income and first-generation students. Holy Cross also created the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and the Office of Title IX initiatives and equal opportunity during Boroughs’ time as president.

For more information on this year’s Commencement events, please visit the Commencement website.

Helen W. Boucher, M.D., FACP, FIDSA ’86. Photo by Avanell Chang

Helen W. Boucher, M.D., FACP, FIDSA ’86, a nationally respected infectious diseases physician and health care administrator, has been elected as chair of the Holy Cross Board of Trustees effective July 1, 2022.

A 1986 Holy Cross graduate who earned a degree in English before pursuing a career in medicine, Dr. Boucher will be the first woman to lead the Board of Trustees. Her initial term as board chair is four years.

Dr. Boucher currently serves as dean ad interim for Tufts University School of Medicine and chief academic officer for Wellforce Health System, a role that was created for her in July 2021. She was instrumental in leading Wellforce’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and is the first woman to lead the Tufts School of Medicine in its 128-year history. Dr. Boucher is professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. She previously served as chief of the Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Tufts Medical Center and director of the Stuart B. Levy Center for Integrated Management of Antimicrobial Resistance at Tufts.

“I am thrilled to welcome Helen Boucher as the new chair of the Board of Trustees,” said Holy Cross President Vincent D. Rougeau. “Upon her selection as interim dean and chief academic officer at Tufts, her colleagues praised her ‘ability to connect with people on a personal level and mobilize teams to tackle and overcome the most daunting of challenges.’ We are delighted that Holy Cross will now benefit from Helen’s extraordinary leadership skills and passion for the College and its Jesuit mission.”

Dr. Boucher’s clinical interests include infections in immunocompromised patients and S. aureus infections. She is the chair of the National Institutes of Health Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group Innovations Working Group, and serves on the Executive and Steering Committees. In addition, Dr. Boucher is the author or coauthor of numerous abstracts, chapters and peer-reviewed articles, and has served as associate editor and editor of prominent periodicals and other publications.

She has been included in Best Doctors in America since 2009, and has been elected Fellow and Member of the Board of Directors of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (2011), to the American Board of Internal Medicine Infectious Disease Exam Writing Committee (2012), and to the American Board of Internal Medicine Infectious Diseases Subspecialty Board (2014). In 2015, Dr. Boucher was appointed a voting member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, and elected treasurer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. She was awarded the IDSA Society Citation Award in October, 2015.

“The board was honored and excited to unanimously elect Helen to her new role as chair,” said Chair Rick Patterson ’80. “Helen’s expertise managing complex organizations, coupled with her unabating love for Holy Cross, will serve her well as she supports and promotes President Rougeau’s bold vision for the College. I commend Stan Grayson ’72, chair of the Trusteeship Committee, for enthusiastically endorsing Helen’s candidacy and rewarding Holy Cross with an exceptional leader at an important time in the College’s history.”

A longtime volunteer at Holy Cross, Dr. Boucher has served on the Board of Trustees since 2014, and as Vice Chair since 2021. Dr. Boucher has served on the College’s Trustee Committee on Mission, Trustee Finance Committee, Trustee Executive Committee, and Trustee Committee on Academic Affairs. A member of the President’s Council, she has been the featured speaker at the College’s “Women in Science” event. In 2021, she received the Sanctae Crucis Award, the highest non-degree accolade the College bestows on alumni, for her extraordinary commitment and leadership in critical fields throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Boucher’s selection as chair fortuitously coincides with the College’s 50th anniversary of the first women students being admitted to Holy Cross, to be celebrated during the 2022-23 academic year.

A resident of Wellesley Hills, MA, Dr. Boucher is married to fellow Crusader Norm Boucher ’85, and they have two daughters.