Few people can say they have given more than six decades of their lives to a single mission.
Sister Janet Rowley ’64, ’69 has done just that, and in April, Newman University honored her extraordinary commitment with one of four annual alumni awards: the Beata Netemeyer Service Award.
Named for Mother Beata Netemeyer, the first provincial of the Wichita Adorers of the Blood of Christ (ASC) sisters, the award recognizes alumni who carry her spirit of service into their lives. Netemeyer was instrumental in establishing Sacred Heart Junior College, now Newman University.
For Rowley, the recognition is particularly meaningful as someone whose life has been defined by the ASC mission. She described feeling humbled by the honor.
“I’ve not done anything exceptional,” Rowley said. “What those who nominated me saw is the expression of the mission of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ as it has unfolded since Vatican II.”
A legacy of mission
Rowley made her first profession on July 1, 1966, and took her final vows as an ASC on June 13, 1971. She celebrated her 60th anniversary as an ASC sister with a Mass at the Wichita ASC Center’s Chapel of the New Covenant in May. She was joined in the celebration by her fellow sisters, family members and friends.
Rowley earned her degree in elementary education, followed by a graduate degree in Christian spirituality with an emphasis on spiritual direction from Creighton University. Looking back, she recalls how the challenges she faced in the classroom became tools for her future ministry. She’ll always remember how her own struggles as a student — particularly in chemistry classes with Sister Margaret Knoeber and Sister Gertrude Bauman — helped form her for the better.
“I enjoyed science, but the first time in my life, I struggled to understand the content of a class,” Rowley said. “It made me a better teacher because then I had empathy for the students who just had trouble grasping whatever it was.”
Rowley’s early teaching career began in a two-room schoolhouse in Colorado before she returned to Wichita to teach at St. Anne’s. Later, she transitioned into hospital chaplaincy, serving for 13 years with Ascension Via Christi hospitals in Wichita.
Although the arc of her work has ranged from the classroom to the hospital bedside, her mission stays consistent: to fulfill “unmet needs,” she said.
“The ordinary life can be extraordinary,” Rowley said. “And in the words of St. Newman, ‘God has created all of us for a specific purpose.’”
The ordinary life can be extraordinary.
Sister Janet Rowley, ASC
Service at the heart
In addition to serving as a teacher and hospital chaplain, Rowley has served on the Lord’s Diner Advisory Council and on the board of the Child Advocacy Center of Sedgwick County. She is dedicated to protecting the community’s most vulnerable, noting that while the church is rightly passionate about the right to life, it must also remember “the rights that are there after you’re born,” she said.
“I just see the work of the Child Advocacy Center, where children have been abused either sexually or physically or witnesses to trauma, and it’s devastating to their lives,” Rowley said. “And this organization is helping children put their lives back together.”
As she looks back on her decades of service, Rowley’s focus remains on the inherent dignity of every person she encounters.
“I just want people to know that they are precious to God and to other people,” she said. “I don’t know that people feel that a lot nowadays.”
Connecting with Newman students
Rowley lives at The Landing, just east of Carrocci Hall on campus. The house serves not only as a small residence for Rowley and two other Adorers, but also as a hospitality spot for Newman students. Every move-in day, when first-year students settle into their on-campus home, the ASC sisters can be seen serving cookies, lemonade or other goodies to students from their front lawn. The sisters also open their home and host Spaghetti Suppers throughout the semester, and students are invited to reserve the space for movie nights, club meetings and more.
“We opened our home to students a decade ago when there were fewer gathering and study spaces on campus,” Rowley said. “It gives a chance for the students to get to meet sisters in a little bit different kind of environment.”
For current Newman students, Rowley offers invaluable advice: respond to the call, even when the world feels uncertain.
“I want them to have hope in a world that is sometimes pretty chaotic, and to know we have a God who loves us, created all this and to believe that there’s good in the end,” Rowley said.
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