Dominican Sisters Stories

Educator
Sister Mariane Fahlman, OP, PhD

Promoting health and physical activity has long been Sister Mariane’s calling. As a professor and coordinator of health education at Wayne State University, she works with undergraduates who are learning how to teach health and physical education and with graduate students who are health professionals.

Her research interests include the effects of exercise on the elderly (funded by the National Institutes of Health) and nutrition research in the Detroit Public Schools (funded by grants from the Michigan Nutrition Network).

Sister Mariane’s honors include the Vern Seefeldt Lifetime Achievement Award; the Wayne State University President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching; and the Michigan Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance’s University Educator of the Year award.
 

A Voice for the Earth
Sister Pat Siemen, OP, JD

Serving as a voice to recognize the inherent rights of all creation has become Sister Pat’s primary work as director of the Center for Earth Jurisprudence at the Barry University School of Law.

A civil attorney who holds a juris doctorate from Northeastern University, Sister Pat’s early ministries included being a community organizer in rural Tennessee, where she assisted disenfranchised African-Americans, and working in parish ministry with the Latino community.

She has also been a legal services attorney for migrant workers in south Florida; a staff attorney for the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice; and director of the Earth Ethics Institute at Miami Dade College. 

Preacher
Sister Sara Fairbanks, OP, PhD

Sister Sara is an associate professor of theology at Barry University, a Dominican university in Miami, Florida. She teaches systematic theology and previously worked in campus ministry at the university. She has also published a number of articles, especially on the issues involved in lay liturgical preaching.

She was the Pollok Lecturer at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has lectured at the National Organization for Continuing Education of Roman Catholic Clergy, the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Dominican Association of Secondary Schools.

She holds an MA in theology from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis and a PhD in theology from the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto.