Thomas Welder, Date of Birth

    

Thomas Welder

Benedictine nun and university administrator

Date of Birth: 27-Apr-1940

Profession: nun, university president

Zodiac Sign: Taurus


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About Thomas Welder

  • Sister Thomas Welder, OSB, (born Diane Marie Welder; April 27, 1940) is a former president of the University of Mary. Welder was born on April 27, 1940, in Linton, North Dakota, to Mary Ann (née Kuhn) and Sebastian Welder.
  • Her father died in 1951; her mother became a Benedictine sister in 1968, after raising Welder and her siblings.
  • Four of Welder's maternal aunts also joined religious orders.Welder attended Cathedral Elementary School and St.
  • Mary's Central High School in Bismarck, North Dakota, graduating in 1958.
  • She studied at the College of St.
  • Benedict in Minnesota, where she discerned a vocation to religious life.
  • She returned to Bismarck to enter the community of Benedictine nuns at Annunciation Monastery.
  • The Benedictines founded Mary College in 1959; Welder was a member of their first freshman class.
  • She joined the order in 1961, completed a bachelor's degree at the College of St.
  • Scholastica in 1963, and made a perpetual monastic profession in 1964.
  • Welder received a master's degree in music from Northwestern University in 1968.Welder began working for Mary College in 1963 and in 1978 was named the school's fifth president.
  • Under Welder, the college attained university status in 1986, becoming the University of Mary, and the enrollment increased from 925 students to nearly 3,000.
  • In 2004, Welder was granted the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, the highest honour of the state of North Dakota.
  • In 2009, she retired and was named President Emerita.
  • Her tenure of 31 years set a record for female college and university presidents in the United States.Welder has a chronic kidney failure condition, for which she received a kidney transplant in 2001.
  • In 2005, a virus caused her to require a second transplant.
  • She sought a transplant in 2007, but could not receive the operation.
  • The procedure was successfully performed in 2011.

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