Michael McFarland earned a bachelor’s degree at Cornell University in 1969, majoring in physics, and a master’s degree (1978) and Ph.D. (1981) in electrical engineering (computer engineering) at Carnegie Mellon University. After working with Native Americans in the Southwest for five years, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1975, and studied at the Weston School of Theology, where he earned a master’s degree in divinity and a Th.M. in social ethics. He was ordained a priest in 1984.
He worked as a consultant at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and continued his collaboration there while teaching at Boston College for 10 years as an associate professor of computer science. In addition, he has done extensive teaching, research, writing and speaking in computer ethics.
In 1996, Fr. McFarland became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He left in 2000 to become the President of the College of the Holy Cross, where he served until January 2012. While at Holy Cross, he helped found the Nativity School of Worcester and became its first board chair.
After a sabbatical at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, where he helped establish a program in Internet Ethics, he became the Treasurer of the USA Northeast Province of the Society of Jesus, overseeing finances, investments, property and health care benefits for the approximately 500 Jesuits in the Province.
On January 1, 2020 he became President of the Gregorian University Foundation, which raises funds for the Gregorian University and its sister institutions in Rome. For almost 470 years, the Gregorian has served the Church by educating bishops, priests, seminarians, religious sisters and brothers, teachers, pastors and other church leaders from all over the world and providing the highest quality scholarship and guidance for the Catholic Church and other religious bodies.
In the spring of 2024, Fr. McFarland was called by the Provincial to become the superior and president of Campion Center, a position he took up officially on July 31, 2024.
