Holy Cross Trustees Name New Chair of the Board

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Board of Trustees at the College of the Holy Cross unanimously confirmed the selection of a new chairman at their December 1 meeting. Michael F. Collins, M.D., will be the first medical doctor to serve in that capacity. He will begin a six-year term on July 1, 2002, when current chairman, H.E. "Jack" Lentz '67, completes his tenure.

Collins is president and chief executive officer of Caritas Christi, the health care system sponsored by the Archdiocese of Boston. Caritas Christi is an integrated health care system with six hospitals, two nursing homes, a hospice, a home for women and children, and Laboure College where nurses and allied health professionals are educated. Caritas Christi has just under $1 billion in annual revenues, over 12,000 employees and has the second largest inpatient market share in the eastern Massachusetts health care marketplace.

"Michael Collins has an outstanding record of leadership. His experience as the successful CEO of a major nonprofit organization and his extensive involvement in fundraising, for both Holy Cross and the Catholic health care system, will be most helpful to me and to the trustees," says Holy Cross president, Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. "His long and devoted service to the College shows his great loyalty to and love of Holy Cross."

A member of the Class of 1977 at Holy Cross, Collins graduated cum laude with a degree in chemistry and attended Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. He trained at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center of Boston and is board certified in internal medicine. He spent two years at Texas Tech University in Lubbock as a member of the faculty in internal medicine and as a member of the dean's office at the Health Sciences Center.

Returning to Boston in 1986 to become a member of the faculty at Tufts, he is currently a clinical professor of medicine there and is a member of the medical staff at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center of Boston.

Collins is actively involved in numerous professional and civic organizations. Currently, he serves as chair of the board of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, an organization that represents over 1,200 Catholic health care institutions in the U.S. In addition he serves on the boards of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart.

At Holy Cross, Collins served as a class chair from 1983-1994, national chair of the Holy Cross Fund from 1994-2001, joining the Board of Trustees in 1996. As a trustee he serves as chair of the academic affairs committee (since 1998), is a member of the development and college relations committee, the executive committee of the board and the campaign steering committee.

Collins lives in Westwood, Mass. with his wife, Maryellen, and their two children.