Sigrid Hutcheson ’59 – Renner Award  

If Saint Ben’s was a movie, Sigrid Hutcheson ’59 would star in it, direct it, produce it and sell you popcorn at intermission. In nearly 70 years of connection to this community, she has been a student, a monastic, a faculty member, an academic innovator, an Alumnae Board member, an advisor, a volunteer and a generous benefactor.  

“I came to Saint Ben’s in 1955,” she says, “and went to the college for a couple years, joined the community, finished in the college, taught in the college, and was a member of the community. So for almost 25 years, the college was just a very close part of my life in every way.” 

In 1978 though, Sigrid left the monastic community and the college. Subsequently she married David Chapman and together they have shared a fulfilling and rewarding life. “However, there’s an interval there when we were living farther away so, my primary connection to the college was giving some money,” she recalls. 

By the 1990s, Sigrid and David had moved back to Minnesota and she was able to reconnect with the college and the community face-to-face. “And so, rather late in life, I had a chance to do many of the things which many of my classmates had done 20 years earlier as young alums.” 

In her years serving on the Alumnae Board, Sigrid has been a conscious and intentional voice for older alumnae and an advocate for increased generational representation on the board. 

She and David both serve on the Saint Ben’s Leadership Advisory Council – meeting regularly with college leaders and administrators to offer their insights and recommendations. She also recently served on a short-term Advancement Planning Council, advising on Strong Integration decisions in Institutional Advancement. 

She and David are consistent and generous donors to the college. They’ve established an endowed scholarship in the name of Sister Dolores Super, established a fund for faculty development, and given in support of scholarships for Bennies in STEM majors. 

But some of Sigrid’s most enduring contributions to the college were probably among her most frustrating at the time. Sigrid was a faculty member in chemistry at Saint Ben’s in the tumultuous era of academic integration. All of today’s successes in integrating and collaborating with Saint John’s University are built on the efforts of that era. As Dr. Jim Hundreiser, senior advisor to the president at the National Association of College and University Business Offices, pointed out in an article a few years ago celebrating our Strong Integration, “The key to their success might be that they chose to do the hard part first: academics. … Ultimately, the two schools seamlessly blended academic offerings into what is today a single curriculum under a joint provost. But those fights were as close to bloody as two Catholic, Benedictine schools are likely to get.” 

She assisted in the development of a general education curriculum. She worked with Sister Emmanuel Renner on creating a well-rounded basic studies program. She led an effort to establish a liberal studies major, helped develop an integrated studies program and define the competencies of a liberally educated woman – which laid the foundation for our current Institutional Learning Goals 50 years later. 

In every stage, in every role, Sigrid has given of herself to Saint Ben’s. “Saint Ben’s is my family,” she acknowledges. “I’m happy I can continue to find ways to support Saint Ben’s. There is great satisfaction in seeing how the college is flourishing.