Cool. I never attended Hillsdale but I was fortunate to live in Hillsdale, Michigan for a time when I was younger. Beautiful place!
Ave Maria University was founded by Dominoes Pizza founder Tom Monaghan. He experienced some sort of Catholic epiphany, sold the Detroit Tigers and his Ann Arbor mansion, and began building the school.
I’ve never been to Hillsdale—my most recent ancestress from MI headed out to Dakota territory about 1885.
The Monaghan legend grows.
He’d sold the Tigers some years before he started something up in Michigan, then got into a zoning fight in Ypsilanti, and eventually decided to ditch Michigan for Florida.
I’ve been in this wing of Catholic higher ed for a couple of decades, and know the six Catholic schools on the list fairly well.
Monaghan knows how to market pizza, but otherwise tends to micro-manage—which, if it’s your money, you may be able to do, but the results and process sometimes are sub-optimal.
When did you live in Hillsdale?
Ironically, Monaghan sold the Tigers to Mike Ilitch, founder of Little Caesar’s. One pizza executive to another.