Newsletter

Distinguished Alumna of 2009 – Sister Barbara Kraemer, Class of 1959

Sister Barbara Kraemer, Class of '59, is a religious, an educator and a missionary.

She entered the School Sisters of St. Francis in 1960.

In her years of teaching she has taught elementary, secondary and higher education students. At Alvernia High School,

her alma mater, she taught history and coached debate and forensics. After completing a master’s degree in education,

she became a social studies consultant at the elementary level, assisting teachers in innovative and justice-related

teaching of social studies and helping in the development of the social studies curriculum in the Chicago Archdiocese.

She served as education director for the School Sisters of St Francis in the United States, visiting schools across

the country and highlighting innovative programs.

After completing a master’s degree in economics, Sister Barbara served as a missionary in Central America. She wrote

a book, Honduras: Economic and Social Data on the National Reality, used for Church personnel and later published

for university students. She prepared and taught courses on Catholic Social Teaching and the formation of local Church

communities in both Honduras and Nicaragua.

Sister Barbara was then elected Vice President of the School Sisters of St Francis and served her international community of sisters in ten countries for eight years, with special responsibility for the sisters in six countries of Latin America.

Returning to Chicago she taught economics and business classes, and eventually became Associate Dean of Faculty at St. Augustine College, a bilingual college for Hispanics in Chicago. After completing her doctorate in public policy analysis, she took a position as visiting professor in the graduate program in Public Services at De Paul University. She had also taught courses in the International Studies Program, the School of Education, and the School for New Learning at De Paul.

Sister Barbara founded the Center for the Study of Religious Life in 1998 and served as its executive director for five years. The Center is a joint endeavor of the national leadership organizations of men’s and women’s religious communities in the United States and Catholic Theological Union at Chicago. Under Sister Barbara’s direction, the Center conducted three years of reflection and dialog on religious life and published a series of booklets on the topics of the dialogs. Sister Barbara participated with a group of scholars to develop and publish a Cultural Audit, a program for religious communities to use in examining the influence of culture on the community and considering ways to grow in intercultural sensitivity. She worked with a committee of librarians to build a collection of research studies on religious life.

In 2003 Sister Barbara was elected Provincial of the United States Province of the School Sisters of St Francis, and she will continue in that position until 2011. She and the two other sisters on the Provincial Team are responsible for furthering the mission of the community, providing for the needs of the 640 sisters in the United States, and planning for the future. They are responsible for six institutions under the direction of the province, including Alverno College in Milwaukee. They have established Casa Alexia, a center with six sisters serving the immigrant community at the Texas-Mexico border. Now they are planning with another religious community to build a facility for memory care for the sisters, and eventually for laity.