Missioners
Sister Luise Ahrens
| "What a gift that is for us to receive and to share with others, our fidelity and daily humdrum love...the stuff of life itself." |  |
A teacher herself, Sister Luise has had a long career of also training others to teach.
After receiving her B.A. in English in 1960 from Manhattanville College in New York, Luise Ahrens of Detroit, MI, entered the Maryknoll Sisters Congregation. She taught at Mary Rogers College, and in 1966, she earned her M.A. in English from Fordham University. That same year, she was assigned to Maui, Hawaii, to teach at Maryknoll High School for three years.
Returning to New York, Sister Luise earned her Ph.D. in English Literature in 1973. Immediately after defending her thesis in March, 1973, she left for a new mission in Indonesia, where she was a Professor in the M.A. Program at the Provincial University of Java.
In 1983, Sister Luise was asked to complete the term of a Maryknoll Sisters Central Governing Board member who had died in a plane crash in Chile. Sister Luise was elected President of the Maryknoll Sisters Congregation in 1984 and served for six years.
In 1991, she was assigned to Cambodia to help re-establish the Royal University of Phnom Penh, which was hit particularly hard during the reign of terror of the Khmer Rouge. Only two educators and thirty-six students were still alive and able to return to help re-establish the university. Sister Luise continues in the English Language program and the university library and collaborates in planning in the national higher education system. In 1985, she received the Fordham University Distinguished Alumni Award.
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