Roger Jean ’70
Trustee
Saint Anselm College
HELPING MAKE HISTORY
Roger and Francine Jean have demonstrated a deep commitment to Saint Anselm for decades, funding endowed and annual scholarships, and more recently by making a generous gift that helped transform the former Cushing Student Center into the hub of campus activities, the Roger and Francine Jean Student Center.
Their latest philanthropic endeavor may have the greatest impact of all—creating a financial foundation for the first school in the history of Saint Anselm College, the Jean School of Nursing and Health Sciences.
The school connects the nationally recognized nursing department and new majors in public health and health sciences, bringing together critically important health care-related disciplines under the leadership of Dr. Diane Uzarski, the inaugural dean of the Jean School of Nursing and Health Sciences.
With the Jean Student Center, which opened in 2018, Roger and Francine envisioned a space that would bring together the wide variety of student activities and services, along with serving as an informal gathering spot at the heart of campus.
They see another opportunity to advance the mission of the college through the Jean School of Nursing and Health Sciences as factors converge to make the need for these vocations more important than ever. As baby boomers age, they have a growing need for health care services, but they also are retiring at a rapidly increasing rate, leaving a workforce shortage.
For the Jeans, supporting the school of nursing and health sciences will not only help address the growing need for health care professionals but also infuse the field with Saint Anselm students whose compassion, critical-thinking skills, and values-based approach set them apart from others.
Roger recalls a conversation with a hospital executive who told him that Saint Anselm provides a distinctly wholistic education to future health care providers. “She said, ‘We see something in Saint Anselm graduates that we don’t see in a lot of others—they see their patients differently, they see them as people,’” he says. “And I’m convinced that one of the reasons for that is they have a strong liberal arts education. The school of nursing and health sciences is our way of saying, ‘Let’s get more of those people into the world.’”
The Jean School of Nursing and Health Sciences will grow enrollment of undergraduate and graduate programs and foster community collaborations. Expected to open in Fall 2025, it will be housed in a new state-of-the-art facility, Grappone Hall, which broke ground in October.
Roger graduated from Saint Anselm College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1970. In 2006, he retired as executive vice president at Liberty Mutual Group and president of its Regional Agency Markets after more than 35 years in the insurance industry. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Saint Anselm in 2006 and is currently serving his second term on the college’s board of trustees. He also was a member of the Presidential Commission on Nursing.
He credits his time at Saint Anselm—with its liberal arts academic core and deep foundation in spirituality made most prominent by the monastic community—for shaping his professional life. “When you leave here, and go into your work life, you feel it,” Roger says. “I felt it in being able to see employees in a different light, and it has helped me make better management and leadership decisions.”
The Jeans have committed to advancing the mission of the college for the next generation of Anselmians. “This is about an investment in the future,” Francine says. “We asked ourselves, ‘What can we do that is truly important to the next generations of students?’ In our view, the school of nursing and health sciences has everything to do with expanding the marketplace for liberal arts—and liberal arts is what Saint Anselm does best.”
This story previously appeared in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of Portraits magazine.