Lyons, Charles W., 1868-1939

Charles W. Lyons, SJ, the fourteenth president of Boston College, was born on January 31, 1868, in Boston. He attended public schools in Boston, including English High School, and entered the Society of Jesus in August 1890. Lyons taught at a number of institutions before and after his ordination in 1904, including Gonzaga College, Georgetown University, and Loyola College in Maryland. After ordination, Lyons acted as the Prefect of Discipline at Georgetown University for a year. He then completed his tertianship at St. Andrew-on-Hudson, NY, and went to teach metaphysics and political economy at St. Francis Xavier College in New York City. In 1907, he taught psychology and political economy at Boston College and was the faculty moderator of the Fulton Debating Society. Lyons spent a brief time in 1909 as the president of Gonzaga College in Washington DC, followed by five years as president of St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia before becoming Boston College president in January 1914. Lyons was the last president to serve as Father Rector to both Boston College and Boston College High School.

Lyons's presidency was notable for his oversight of continued construction on the Chestnut Hill campus, started by his predecessor Thomas Ignatius Gasson, and also for his leadership of the College during World War I. From October 1916 to 1918, Boston College's enrollment dropped eighty-one percent due to conscription and voluntary enlistment. Boston College became home to a Students' Army Training Corps (SATC), one of five hundred sixty-five institutions selected to train men to become officers, engineers, scientists, and administrators in the United States Army. With the dissolution of SATC programs, the government reinstituted the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) that had been suspended during the war. Boston College was granted a ROTC unit, in which on hundred thirty-seven students enrolled.

Lyons left Boston College in July 1919, though he returned in 1922 to teach metaphysics for two years before becoming president of Georgetown University. Lyons moved back to Boston once more in 1928 and joined the Mission band for eight years before retiring to Weston College in 1936. Lyons died on January 31, 1939, on his seventy-first birthday.