Every spring, at graduation, Le Moyne College has a grand marshal. The most senior member of the
Faculty in attendance leads the commencement procession into an arena – most recently the Exposition
Center at the New York State Fairgrounds – packed with graduating students and their families.

For the last few years, that person was Dr. Shawn Ward, an associate professor of psychology, the Faculty Athletic Representative and a member of the Le Moyne community since 1987.

Next year, for that honor, the college will need to select somebody else.

Ward, who recently retired, spent 38 years at the institution and was inducted as an honorary member of the Le Moyne College Athletics Hall of Fame. In a Zoom interview this month with a Le Moyne sports journalism class, he said he’s enjoying retirement, and he conceded that the grind of an adult lifetime of work had been “wearing me down.”

But he also admitted he sometimes misses being in the classroom and on the athletic fields so much that he still goes to some games, as a spectator.

Unless it’s raining or snowing, he said.

“I’m a fair-weather fan,” he said, laughing – a choice about attending only on nice days that he didn’t used to have.

Ward taught students about psychology, while student-athletes, he said, taught him more about their lives. He was often advocating for the school’s athletes. While traveling with the teams, he learned the immense amount of work and pressure that comes with the practices, games and obligations of being a student-athlete.

“Doing both makes them whole,” he said of academics and athletics. “Take one away and they’re not complete.”

Ward, originally from New Jersey, attended Siena College as an undergraduate. He went on do to his graduate work at Fordham University and Temple. In 1987, he had a choice between positions at Le Moyne College or Mt. St. Mary’s in Maryland.

He chose Le Moyne, he said, because his wife Mary had family in Buffalo, not so far away, and because the school reminded him of his undergraduate experience at Siena.

When he arrived, the college only had about 1,400 students, he said. He’s watched the enrollment almost double. Ultimately, he said, his choice to stay at Le Moyne came down to just how great a place greater Syracuse was to raise his family.

That feeling radiated to everyone he met on campus.

Looking back on it, he says, he is especially proud of the way the students and his faculty colleagues dealt with what he calls “the losses.” Ward said he wasn’t referring to losses in competition. What he was describing are the hardest events of all at any campus community:

Ward was referring to such tragedies as the loss of Shane Lynch, the longtime men’s lacrosse coach and a fellow Le Moyne Athletics Hall of Famer, to cancer in 1998. He was particularly impressed by how the Le Moyne community – faculty, students and alumni – rallied around Lynch’s family.

That, to Ward, is what he spoke of repeatedly as the “Le Moyne way.”

To Ward, what matters in sports isn’t the team records. To him, he said, it’s about one thing:

“The people.”

He mentioned several examples, including the response to community trauma when a student-athlete died by suicide and the way the entire campus rallied around baseball captain Pat Wiese during his successful battle with cancer more than a decade ago.

After 38 years, countless games and thousands of student interactions, Ward’s impact reached far beyond the classroom – an impact that led, to his surprise, to his 2022 admission into the athletics Hall of Fame.

He called it “a tremendous honor,” though he said that accolade is hardly the most memorable thing he took away from Le Moyne. The sense of family the college provides has stuck with Ward into retirement, and helps explain why you’ll still see him around campus from time to time.

“That’s what Le Moyne’s about,” he said, “and you don’t hear that stuff.”

This article was written by Hope Adigun, Scott Borden, Riley Brennen, Lilly Capria, Samantha Carroll,
Ashley Carter, Grace Crooks, Arianna Exarchakis, Catherine Kidby, David Kleberg, Nathaniel Kwait,
Nicholas Lauro, Branwyn Lupton, Sophia Melone, Olivia Metcalf, McKenzie Ponto, Simone Schwarz-Eise,
Mack Suleiman and Marialicia Vick.