“Even though I am the director, I won’t be doing this alone. I’m looking for counsel from our board as well as from Felician students, and the community just to see what is really needed and where we can be the most helpful.”

Ingrid Dul is talking about her new role as the Director of the Blessed Mary Angela Institute. Former Felician Provost, Sister Mary Rosita Brennan presented a proposal to the Felician Sisters to create the BMA Institute and it was founded at Felician University in January of 2015 through an initial endowment provided by the Felician Sisters of Our Lady of Hope Province. The BMA Institute is named after Blessed Mary Angela Truszkowska, the Foundress of the Felician Sisters, and is rooted in contemplative-active spirituality. The mission of the Institute is to respond to society’s needs and concerns through contemplative dialogue which can lead to a deeper reflective understanding that can guide practical action resulting in the transformation of the Church and society.

Blessed Mary Angela Truszkowska

Ingrid Dul is uniquely qualified for her position as the Institute’s new director. She got her BA at Felician University before earning an MA in Psychology from Montclair State University, and currently is an Assistant Professor at Felician teaching in both the Religious Studies and Psychology Departments. Before that she worked as a therapist in the counseling programs at the non-profit Family Services League, and was also coordinator of SAVE, Essex County’s designated rape crisis center, where she worked as part of the response team for the county providing advocacy and outreach. It was work that Ms. Dul says, “translates very well into my new role now at Felician, working with the Institute, being able to work for and towards restorative justice within the community, not only of Felician, but the surrounding community as well.”

In fact, reaching out to students, the extended Felician Family, and the local community will be part of what Ms. Dul will continue to do as BMAI’s director. She says she got a good start thanks to her predecessor, Sr. Annelle Velivis, the Institute’s first director with getting the Institute up and running. But Sr. Annelle says after five years at the helm of the Institute, “it was time to move on and find someone who was younger, filled with bright new ideas, and has a finger on what is happening in the church and society today.” Sr. Annelle will stay involved with BMAI in an advisory role.

Meanwhile, Ms. Dul is looking forward to working on issues of social justice such as immigration, racial injustice, poverty, and “things that are affecting not only Felician students, but community members all around us, and being able to see in what ways we can help and what programs we can do so that we can share our values that every human has dignity and every human deserves justice.” The work will utilize the Catholic social teaching of “See, Judge, Act”, as in, seeing or identifying a problem, reflecting on or making a judgement on how best to address it, and acting together as a community towards solving it.

Ms. Dul would love to tackle many issues head on but doesn’t want to spread herself too thin and instead plans to hone in on what the focus of the institute should be over the next few years. “I think the humbling part about all of this is that we have to admit that we can be wrong. So, even though our intentions are great in helping people, at the end of the day, we do have to look at the community and ask is this helpful, we have to go back and see what we did and judge it again, and then act based on our results. So it’s not a one-time plan. It’s something that is continuously being revised.”