Joseph Raymond Nonnatus Maxwell

Joseph Raymond Nonnatus Maxwell (7 November 1899 – 18 September 1971) was an American Catholic priest, academic, poet, and college administrator. A Jesuit since 1919, he served as President of the College of the Holy Cross from 1939 to 1945, and President of Boston College from 1951 to 1958.

Early life and education Maxwell was born in Taunton, Massachusetts, United States, on 7 November 1899, to Richard Everett Maxwell and Caroline A. Carpenter.

He attended Taunton public schools, including Taunton High School, before entering the College of the Holy Cross in 1918. he studied the classics at St. Andrew-on-Hudson Novitiate for two years. He then went to Boston College, graduating in 1926 with a Master of Arts, and from 1926 to 1929 held a teaching position at the College of the Holy Cross. He went on to study philosophy at Weston College, graduating in 1933 with a Licentiate of Sacred Theology. In 1939, Wheeler Hall was dedicated, despite decreasing enrollment, which dropped by 70 in his first academic year as president. He made clear his athletic policies in the fall of 1941, when he limited the number and size of athletic scholarships, and asserted that the college needed "to keep our standards where they belong," even at the risk of less successful sports teams. As president, he struggled with a drop in enrollment caused by the Korean War, but also made improvements to the school's administration, including the development of faculty norms for promotion.

Notably, it was during Maxwell's presidency that Boston College seriously debated whether or not to change its name to reflect its status as a university. The question of changing the college's name was first raised at a 1953 board of trustees meeting, where a motion was made to empower the president to negotiate a change of the name to 'Boston Catholic University'. He served as pastor of St. Joseph's Church in Falmouth, where he designed and built "a church of his own designing adapted both to the new liturgy and age-old semi-tropical heat of Jamaica." and The Classical Weekly, The Classical Weekly, and Thought: A Journal of Philosophy. The following is an incomplete list of his works: (poetry)

"New England Indian Summer" (1940) "Liberal Education and the Classics" (1950)