NEWPORT – The Salve Regina University board of trustees today announced that the school will dedicate its new Center for Culture and the Arts in honor of Sister M. Therese Antone, the university’s president, who plans to retire in June 2009 after more than 30 years of service. Upon her retirement, Antone will become chancellor of Salve.

“The Antone Center will be a focal point for the arts and cultural and historic preservation at Salve Regina University, and a fitting tribute to an exceptional leader who has made an indelible mark on this institution, Newport and the state of Rhode Island,” Joseph DiStefano, president of the trustees, said in a statement.

During her tenure, Antone has overseen more than $65 million in fundraising and a more-than-30-fold increase in the university’s endowment, from $1.3 million in 1994 to more than $40 million today.

She has helped the university more than triple its applications for freshman admissions, from 1,391 in 1994 to an all-time high of 5,801 in 2007. She has played a key role in the establishment in 1996 of the university’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy.

And she has overseen nearly $90 million in capital improvements, overseeing the preservation of the legendary 19th-century estates that make up the Newport campus, garnering awards and recognition from preservation agencies across the country, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Getty Campus Heritage Program.

“[Her] commitment to preservation excellence led to the establishment of the Cultural and Historic Preservation Department at Salve Regina,” the university noted in a statement today. “Further, it is Sister Therese’s stewardship of the arts at Salve Regina which has encouraged the Department of Art to maintain its high quality as one of a select number of small liberal arts schools accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.”

Antone – a member of many boards and committees – earned her bachelor’s degree from Salve University, a master’s degree from Villanova University and a doctorate in education from Harvard University. She also is a graduate of the senior executive program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.

Before being named Salve’s president in 1994, she had served the university as a faculty member, director of development, vice president of institutional advancement and executive vice president for corporate affairs and advancement. During her career, she also has served as a teacher at all levels, as principal of a coeducational secondary school, and as director of finance and secondary education for the Sisters of Mercy, in Rhode Island and Central America.

She is a recipient of numerous honors, including the National Conference Humanitarian Award and John E. Fogarty Achievement Award, both in 1998, and last March received a Fullbright Senior Specialist award to Krasnoyarsk State University in Russia. She was honored for her preservation efforts in 2006, with induction into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.

The Antone Center for Culture and the Arts –formed by the restoration and merger of two historic 19th-century carriage houses – will be dedicated this fall, after the project’s completion, the trustees said. (READ MORE) It will house performance areas, studios, offices, classrooms and laboratories for academic departments in Cultural and Historic Preservation, Art and Theatre Arts.

The university is looking to raise $12 million in its 60th Anniversary capital campaign – including $7.5 million for the Antone Center, $3 million for annual program support and $1.5 million for the university’s endowment – and has brought in $10 million so far.

Donations to arts center have included a $750,000 challenge grant late last year from the Kresge Foundation and a $250,000 grant from the Alletta Morris McBean Charitable Trust. To receive the Kresge grant, however, Salve must raise another $2 million by October to meet its anniversary fundraising goal.

Salve Regina University, founded by the Sisters of Mercy to provide higher education in the Catholic tradition to both men and women, was chartered by the State of Rhode Island in 1934 and welcomed its first class in 1947. Today, it has an enrollment of 2,500 students from 37 states and 17 nations. To learn more, visit salve.edu.