During a visit to the U.S. Embassy in his hometown of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Aasiri Fernando ’95/97 found a copy of Peterson’s Complete Guide to Colleges. This book introduced him to Wichita State and its engineering college.
“I was impressed,” Fernando says of the university and Wichita’s aviation community. “Wichita State was my first-choice school.” After consulting with his parents, he left for Wichita in August 1990. That journey, however, did not go entirely as planned. Upon landing in the United States, Fernando discovered his luggage had been lost. When he arrived in Wichita, he encountered another complication. “I went to the dorm and realized my reservation was not there.”
So with no luggage and no place to sleep that night, Fernando, a Catholic, asked if there were any churches nearby. He was told about St. Paul Parish’s Newman Center and given a campus map. He found the Newman Center, near the intersection of 17th and Roosevelt, where he talked with Father David Linnebur about the trouble he was having. “I didn’t know anybody, and I didn’t have a place to stay,” says Fernando.
Linnebur offered to let him sleep in the Newman Center basement, but he ended up in a Brennan Hall dorm room after it was hastily prepared. As for Fernando’s luggage, some of it never showed up, but most of it arrived about four months after he did. In the meantime, St. Paul parishioners helped him find new clothes. “The place was very welcoming,” he says.
Current St. Paul Parish pastor Father John Hay hopes those who pass through the Newman Center’s doors still find it to be an inviting place. “We welcome people no matter who they are,” he says.
St. Paul Parish, part of the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, does not have physical boundaries like other parishes within the Diocese. Parishioners include WSU students as well as members of the community who are associated with the university or want to support the parish’s college ministry.
The Newman Center is, says Hay, “a place where young people can come and pray and develop a relationship with God, experience fellowship and aspire to common ideals.” Newman Centers, named in honor of John Henry Newman, who became a cardinal of the Catholic Church in 1879, can be found on the campuses of colleges and universities across the country.
Wichita State’s Newman Center, which sits on land owned by the Diocese, opened its doors in December 1966. However, Catholic Shockers had been meeting together as members of the Newman Club for about 30 years before the building’s construction.
According to the 1942 Parnassus yearbook, “Six years ago the Newman Club ... was organized with twelve charter members.” At that time, meetings were held every other Thursday, guest speakers were invited once a month, and parties, dances and picnics comprised the group’s social calendar.
Although meeting times and social activities have changed over the years, the Newman Center still offers students plenty of opportunities to grow in their faith and socialize together. “It’s a wonderful place to collaborate, grow and bond,” says Michael Jacobs, a junior majoring in history. “It’s just like a family.”
The building, which was renovated in 2012, offers students access to a library, study rooms, humanities classes with credits that transfer to WSU, daily Mass in the chapel, a home-cooked meal for $1 each Thursday and a game room. “It’s a good area for them to hang out,” Katie Kissling, director of student services and religious education, says of the basement.
Students can also attend a variety of faith-based classes and study groups. “This is a place where they can grow intellectually in their faith as they do in other academic disciplines,” says Hay, who has been at the Newman Center since 2010. “We want students to be integrated human beings, self-aware, living life to the fullest. Their faith isn’t just to keep to themselves.”
One way to accomplish that, he says, is by partnering with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity. “We want to go out and do service to make the world a better place.That’s what it’s all about.”
A number of Shocker alumni are active in supporting Hay, the students and the center’s mission. “Alums participate in many ways by giving their time, treasure and talent,” Hay says.
Shockers who currently serve as members of the Newman Center Board of Directors are Jerry ’63 and Jan Aaron, Father Jim Billinger ’78, Steve ’85 and Kris Boleski, Mike ’77 and Kathy Burrus, Dan ’53/04 and Gayla Carney, Frank ’00 and Janie Carney, Greg and Peggy Duick, Bob ’64 and Maura Geist, Mary Ann Lickteig fs ’51, Mike and Julie Lievens, Jim and Sarah Pirtle, Father Mike Simone, Bob and Anne Simpson, Father Dan Spexarth, Peg Tichacek, Dale ’64/70 and Alice Wiggins, and Mickey Armstrong ’45.
“These wonderful community members have been able to provide direction,” says Hay. “They have helped so much.”
Armstrong, who was a member of the Newman Club during her student days, says she has enjoyed her Newman Center involvement. She also appreciates Hay’s dedication. “He’s interested in giving the students food, recreation, spiritual instruction and spiritual help if they need it,” she says. “Everybody’s welcome.”
Fernando, who remains grateful for the welcome he received as an 18-year-old, has stayed involved with the center in several different ways. As a graduate student, he began playing either the piano or organ for the 7 p.m. Sunday Mass each week, something he continued to do after graduation. “I was fascinated by the old pipe organ,” he says. “During my graduate years, I took lessons from (late organ professor) Robert Town.”
Fernando, who regularly inhabited the Newman Center’s study rooms, sometimes into the early morning hours, credits Wichita State and the center for helping him both personally and professionally. “It has been a great school for me,” he says.
Today, the Wichita resident who worked as a Physical Plant assistant mechanic when a WSU student is an engineering manager at Cessna. “The knowledge has given me success,” Fernando says. “I am in a job that I love to do.” As for the Newman Center, he says it’s “a place for comfort after college as you continue your journey. I still find comfort and refuge in the chapel.”
Through the years, WSU’s Newman Center has helped ease many a student’s rough first days at college, like Fernando’s. It has served Wichita State students, for decades now, as a welcoming place to pray, study, eat and play — its doors open to all.
