By John Garvey, President
The Catholic University of America Magazine, Spring 2017

This issue of The Catholic University of University America Magazine features a series of articles on the Tim and Steph Busch School of Business and Economics at Catholic University. The past year has been an exciting time for the Busch School. Last April the school received the largest financial donation in Catholic University’s history — and a new name in recognition of philanthropists Tim and Steph Busch, who made the lead gift in this donation. This semester, we partnered with the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City to help small businesses in Washington, D.C., grow and create jobs in our local community. You can read about these and other exciting initiatives in this issue. 

Reading these articles got me to thinking about my grandfather.

My Grandfather Garvey was the kindest man I have ever known. I grew up next door to him and loved talking to him. He would listen to you like you were the most interesting person in the world, like he could not wait to hear what you would say next. He went to Mass every morning with my grandmother, to whom he was married for 70 years. Grandpa lived to be 95. I remember once watching him struggle to his feet as my younger sister entered the room because she — all of 10 years old —was a lady, and he — then about 80 — was a gentleman.

He was also a businessman. He started work-ing for the railroad right out of high school. Then he became the secretary for an executive at the National Malleable & Steel Castings Co. In 1916 he purchased his own steel company, the Sharpsville Boiler Works, which became Sharpsville Steel. The Ford Model T had just been introduced eight years earlier and cars were beginning to be available to the middle class. My grandfather’s company built storage and pressure tanks for refineries and tank trucks for transporting oil. The Great Depression hit them hard. Grandpa Garvey didn’t want to lay anyone off. He put all the money he and my grandmother had into the company to meet payroll and keep it afloat, and ultimately the company did succeed. 

My grandfather’s experience showed me that business business can be a force for great good in the world. When he was starting out, it was a business — first the railroad, then National Malleable — that gave him meaningful work. This work allowed him to provide for his family and to plan for his future. When he became the chairman of Sharpsville Steel, he was able to provide work to many others and to produce goods that met a genuine need. 

The Busch School was founded on the same premise that motivated my grandfather: that business can be — and ought to be — a force for good. We provide our students with the moral and intellectual formation necessary to build a more humane economy.

The Busch School gives our students the concrete skills to build and contribute to a business. We connect students to business leaders who mentor them as they navigate the twists and turns of business. We give students a space to incubate and test out their business ideas. The school’s success in preparing students for careers in business is borne out by the numbers. Within three months of graduation, 93% of Class of 2016 students from the Busch School had jobs.

But beyond this, we teach our students that business must always serve the dignity and uphold the worth of the human person, who is made in the image and likeness of God. Ethics in Business is not just a required course in the curriculum. It is the idea that animates the entire school. That’s why the Catholic Church’s rich social doctrine on questions related to human dignity, work, markets, and solidarity are integrated into every part of the curriculum. 

In his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis said that “business is a vocation, and a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life; this will enable them truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all.” At the Busch School we are trying to prepare students not just for a career but for a calling.