Sister Mary Diane Taylor, OSU: "She has a deep respect for her students..."

    Becoming an Ursuline Sister came as no surprise to Sister Mary Diane Taylor and her family. Since she started first grade in the Fredericktown public school system in Washington County, Kentucky, she had been taught by the Ursuline Sisters of Mount  Saint Joseph. She was taught by Ursulines through eight years of grade school and four years of high school at Fredericktown before beginning her postulancy at Mount Saint Joseph following her graduation from high school.

    “I don’t remember any moment when my calling to a religious life came,” says Sister Mary Diane. “It always seemed to be what I wanted to do. I never waivered on it. But I didn’t decide on the Ursulines until my senior year in high school.”
      Why the Ursulines? “Because I was more familiar with them than anyone else and I had been to the Mount before,“ she explained. “The women who directed the choir in our church and their husbands would always take a school bus to the Mount to get the teachers to bring them back to The Burg – as Fredericktown is called – for the start of the new school year. They would let anybody in the choir travel along for the experience and I did just that.”
       After graduating from Fredericktown High School, familiar with the Ursulines and familiar with Mount Saint Joseph, Sister Mary Diane began her postulancy that fall at the Mount.
       Sister Mary Diane was born in Fredericktown, one of 11 children born to William Chester and Diana Thompson Taylor. One of the Taylor children died in childhood, the other ten survive today. Sister Mary Diane is the fifth youngest of the seven girls and three boys in the Taylor Family. For most of his life, William Chester Taylor was a bookkeeper at Hayden Mill and Grain in Springfield.     

     One year after beginning her postulancy at Mount Saint Joseph, Sister Mary Diane began her novitiate training and in the second year of her novitiate, began taking college courses at the Mount, taught by teachers from Brescia College. Her “all-Ursuline education” continued as the faculty at Brescia at that time was exclusively Ursuline sisters.
       Sister Mary Diane’s teaching career began in 1954 at Blessed Mother Grade School in Owensboro where she taught all subjects to second graders. “My smallest class was 54 students,” she recalls, “and my biggest was 78. That group of 78 was the cutest group of kids I’ve ever taught. I still keep in touch with some of them.”  She went on to say that she taught some of those 78 youths a few years later at Owensboro Catholic High School and some in later years in her art class at Brescia University.
       After three years at Blessed Mother, Sister Mary Diane moved on to Paducah. “Because I had handled 78 at Blessed Mother, they sent me to Saint Thomas More at Paducah because they were expecting a big group of third graders there,” she recalls. “However, the principal there took compassion on me, came up with an extra teacher and was able to split the big third grade class in half.”

      Sister Mary Diane taught at Paducah for one year before moving on to Seven Holy Founders School in Saint Louis to again teach third graders. Near the end of her first year there, she replaced a sixth grade teacher who had died and taught sixth grade the remainder of that school year. The next year she moved up to teaching seventh grade and taught large seventh grade classes for the next four years.
       The next year Sister Mary Diane moved up to the high school level for the first time in her teaching career. She taught all classes to freshmen and sophomores at Saint Bernard High School in Clemensville in Casey County, Kentucky. “It was a very small school,” Sister Mary Diane says, “but I really enjoyed it. It was a great experience.”
       She returned to Owensboro in 1964 to start an art department at Catholic High School.
       Three years later she did the same at the Mount Saint Joseph Academy. While at the academy, Sister Mary Diane also taught art at Brescia College, the start of a 40-year association with that school.
       Sister Mary Diane left the academy three years later to become chair of Brescia’s fine arts department and the school’s area coordinator of art. She held both positions until 1986 when a lay person took over as area coordinator of art, leaving her as chair of the division of fine arts, a position she still holds today.
       During her long tenure as chair of the division of fine arts, Sister Mary Diane has earned the respect and admiration of many. 

      Art department professor David Stratton says, “Sister Diane brings lots of things to the university and campus environment. Her design and color expertise has been utilized by the university administration and facilities many times over her 40 years here. She is diligent and detail oriented. Her finesse with a project, either in her personal artwork or in managing people, is to adhere to the goal with particular regard to details and how they make the whole better.”
       Stratton continues, “She brings the department a sense of stained glass, tapestry, art history, and printmaking, to make the above mentioned “whole” better. She also brings a practical sense to the art department, a group of artists who at times might not be. Working with Sr. Diane is not work.”
       Stephen Driver, also an art department professor, says, “Over the last 13 years I have grown as a teacher and person in small part due to working with Sister Diane. She is also the snappiest dressed in the art department!”
       Sister Mary Diane has spent almost four decades at Brescia, seeing it change from Brescia College to Brescia University. What are the biggest changes she’s seen?
       Without hesitation, she answers, “One of the biggest would be the recent change in presidency, the first non-Ursuline president.” She was referring to Father Larry Hostetter, a former member of the Brescia faculty who was named the school president May 18. “I have been impressed by Father Larry,” Sister Mary Diane continues, “impressed by his enthusiasm, his work ethic…he’s done a good job.”      

     Father Larry also has words of praise for the head of his fine arts department. “Sister Diane truly embodies the Brescia difference,” he says. "She has a deep respect for her students which is translated in the deep care and concern she has for them. She also helps them to discover their potential and gives them the confidence to bring that potential to full realization. She’s a Brescia gem.”
       Sister Mary Diane says another big change is in the students themselves. She says, “They have changed so much. It used to be you’d come up to the art department at night or on weekends and the place would be crawling with students working outside of class studies. Today it’s rare to see one or maybe two up here.” She added, “I think the reason for that has a whole lot to do with the culture we’re living in. Forty years ago everybody didn’t have to own a current automobile, the latest, finest. They didn’t have to have every electronic device that’s ever been created. Things were simpler, tuition wasn’t as high, they didn’t have to work to make a living.”
       Are today’s kids smarter than their predecessors? “I don’t think there’s any major difference in their intelligence,” says Sister Mary Diane. “Maybe there’s a difference in how they use it, but they’re not as focused generally.  There are exceptions, of course.”

      In recent years, Sister Mary Diane has added stained glass work to her repertoire. One of her stained glass creations is the Eucharistic chapel window at Precious Blood Church in her home parish. In addition to the window, Sister Mary Diane played a key role in the recent renovation of the church. Precious Blood pastor Father Brad Whistle says, "Sister Mary Diane was very instrumental in working on the art and environment committee of the renovation. This involved choosing color schemes and funishings in the church. She also helped with designing and development of the wall hanging and the stations of the cross." Father Brad says Sister Mary Diane's professional expertise and career at Brescia University in the art department she was extremely helpful to him in the renovation. He adds, "I am not a very atrsie kind of person. Therefore, I had to rely upon someone, and that person for me was Sister Mary Diane."
       Sister Mary Diane is a department head and teaching fulltime at an age when most people are retired and have been retired for a number of years. Are there any plans for retirement in her future?
       She says, “The only plans that I have depend on God’s plans for me. Because as long as my health holds up and I don’t have any reason to feel that I’m not useful, I’ll keep on.”