Mary Molloy

Mary Aloysia Molloy (June 14, 1880 – September 27, 1954) was president of the College of Saint Teresa from 1928 through 1946.

Biography Molloy was born in Sandusky, Ohio, the only child of Irish immigrants. She attended Sandusky High School where she won an essay contest by the Ohio Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. She gained admittance to Ohio State University in 1899 and earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1903, with more honors than anyone else up to that time. Her doctoral thesis, "The Vocabulary of the Old English Bede", was a concordance to the Anglo-Saxon translation of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.

Leo Tracy of the Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota, and directoress of Winona Seminary, wished her teaching staff to obtain bachelor's degrees. She wrote to Molloy asking her to come to Winona to instruct the sisters. In August 1907 Molloy responded and went to Winona, Minnesota. Working under Tracy she taught the freshman curriculum. In 1908 she was named the seminary's assistant principal and began teaching second year courses. The seminary became the College of Saint Teresa and Molloy was atypical as the lay dean of a Catholic college.