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In June 1950 Father McGillicuddy was relieved of parish duties and appointed full-time chaplain. With its own home on campus, a chapel, and a full-time minister, Sheil took another step in its evolution. Daily and Sunday masses were now offered, and an extended program was now presented. There was hardly an hour when Sheil was not in use for religious services, meetings, social events, reading, lounging, table tennis, bridge, brown-bagging-you name it.

The new chapel was located on the third floor, and although small -- it seated a hundred -- it had a warmth and a charm that appealed to all. Students served as organists, choir members, Mass servers, ushers and cleaning personnel, responding enthusiastically whenever a need arose.

Regular classes and seminars were held in a large, all-purpose basement meeting room and in lounges on the first floor. An annual series of lectures and discussions on marriage was inaugurated, as well as a three-quarter theology course. Inquiry classes were held each quarter, which led to an average of 20 to 25 converts entering the Church each year. Dr. Francis E. McMahon, a former professor at the University of Notre Dame, introduced a long-standing series of lectures on Scholastic philosophy. Father Barnabas Ahern, C.P., who later served as an expert at the Second Vatican Council and adviser to the Holy Father, presented a series of talks of Scripture. Other lecturers included Clare Booth Luce (whose audience filled Cahn auditorium); Rev. Leopold Braun, a priest who had been in Moscow from 1934 to 1945; and Ed Marciniak, editor of Work, the Catholic labor Alliance weekly. In 1952 Sheil's increasing number of graduate students established a program of their own, combining social and intellectual events.

During these years many Sheil members volunteered their services at the Angel guardian Orphanage and Marillac House in Chicago, gathering at the center every Saturday morning to travel to the city and spend most of the day helping out the nuns who served at these institutions.

A major achievement of the Sheil club came in August 1956 when it hosted that year's week-long National Newman Club Convention at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago that drew 1,000 students and chaplains from across the country. (Organizations serving Catholic students at American at non-Catholic colleges and universities are traditionally called Newman Clubs in honor of John Henry Cardinal Newman, the eminent Oxford scholar and convert to Catholicism.) After almost a year of planning, a dedicated group made all the arrangements with the hotel, sent out invitations, accepted registrations, made reservations, mapped out the entire program, arranged a convention Mass at Holy Name Cathedral celebrated by Cardinal Stritch, and managed all the numerous meetings, seminars, social events (including an all-day outing for the entire convention at Chevy Chase Country club in Wheeling) and the final banquet.

The convention was such a success it drew lavish praise from the hotel officials, who said it was one of the most effective and best-run they had seen and then offered to hire several committee members for their staff. Another measure of that success was the money left over after all convention expenses were paid. It was enough to treat the entire committee to an all-expense paid trip to the following year's Newman Convention at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

But the decade of the fifties also had its dark side, notably the Korean War. Some Sheil members were called into military service, and at least one of them, Bill Pearson, became a casualty.

In 1956 the world was shocked by the Hungarian Revolt and suffering of the Hungarian people as they felt the crush of Soviet repression. As many of them fled abroad, Sheil sponsored a campus-wide meeting in November to find ways of assisting the refugees. The response was overwhelming. Students emptied their pockets in response to an appeal for funds begun at the meeting. More funds and truckloads of clothing were collected in the following weeks, and the university established several scholarships for Hungarian students.

Some new developments in the '50s extended the range of the Sheil community. Catholic students at Kendall College, National College of Education, and the Evanston Hospital Nursing School, joined with those from Northwestern in the services and activities. Chicago-area alumni formed a Sheil Alumni Association. Tom Sellinger, who had been membership chairman in his student years in the '40s, was one of the prime movers for this organization, which set up an annual program of events (including an annual homecoming supper), gathered for regular monthly meetings, and raised funds for establishing and maintaining a Sheil library. More than 300 new books and periodicals were soon on the shelves at 1922 Sheridan. Before the middle of the decade, alumni membership was expanded to include all interested Catholic college graduates in the area.

In 1958 and for the next decade, the Sheil Club became known as the Sheil Foundation, in recognition of the fact that its extended scope and membership groups had reached beyond the usual boundaries of a campus club. And in 1959 Albert Cardinal Meyer, successor to Cardinal Stritch, taking note of the important work being carried on by the Sheil Foundation, conferred on Father McGillicuddy the title of Monsignor. ("And just in time, too," Father Mac quipped. "Before the rank itself was abolished.")

At the end of the decade Father McGillicuddy and Father Thomas McDonough of the University of Chicago's Calvert Club became instrumental in gaining for Newman Clubs on campuses throughout Illinois an important new source of support. The Illinois Council of the Knights of Columbus had been making annual donations to the Newman Club at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. At the urging of the Sheil and Calvert chaplains, Cardinal Meyer asked the Knights to consider extending their grants to other clubs in the state. The Knights responded favorably, and since 1960, K. of C. Newman grants have been distributed Statewide. By 1967, Sheil's share of the grants exceeded $3,000, about 25% of Sheil's annual budget at the time. Its current share level of $8,000, however, covers less than 4% of annual expenses.

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