In the presence of family, friends, vowed members and associates,
Emily Malleis was welcomed as a candidate into the Adrian Dominican Congregation on February 15. The entrance ceremony took place in Holy Rosary Chapel and was part of the Congregation’s Evensong for Peace, a weekly prayer to which Emily has been committed since it began last August. For the past year, Emily has been serving as Associate Campus Minister at Siena Heights University in Adrian.

Emily with Carleen Maly, OP, Director of Vocations

During the ceremony, Donna Markham, OP, Prioress, asked Emily, “What do you wish and what do you ask of the Adrian Dominican Congregation?” Emily responded: “I desire to place my life and my trust in God through the hands of the Adrian Dominican Sisters in order to embark on a journey — a journey that summons me beyond the secure and imaginable into the unknown — to grow ever more deeply in love and relationship with God and others. I ask the Adrian Dominican Congregation to share its joy and its sorrow, to model its courage and its vulnerability, and to speak of its hope and its despair. And I ask the Congregation to support me as I do the same, so that together, we may form each other as bold and faith-filled women in the mission to seek truth, make peace and reverence life.”

The youngest of nine children, Emily grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Malleis family was active in St. Alphonsus Parish, which was staffed by Redemptorist priests, and the children attended the parish grade school where they were taught by Grand Rapids Dominican Sisters. During her college years, Emily spent a summer in volunteer ministry with the Dominican Sisters of Blauvelt, New York. She graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with a bachelor’s degree in biology and Spanish. Prior to coming to Siena Heights, Emily worked in cancer research at Van Andel Institute.