AMDG
As our society, our culture, and our world
become more and more secular and materialistic, we have been rapidly losing the
sense of the true, the good, and the beautiful.
In the dictatorship of relativism truth for you is what you think is true; moral good for you is what you
think is good with no regard for absolute truth and good as God sees it. People are pressured if not forced to
tolerate and approve what a sizable number of opinion makers say is true and
good, as for example abortion and the homosexual lifestyle. This is all leading to social chaos where
every person goes in a different direction, doing what is right in his/her own
mind, which was the mentality at Sodom and Gomorrah.
Our founding fathers noted that our
constitution and government of law can only be effective under a moral
consensus that our Christian faith can give us.
Otherwise a policeman would be needed on every street corner. John Adams observed: “We have no government armed with power capable of
contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.......Our
Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people."
To prepare to confront this reality in their
careers Thomas Aquinas College students have the task of
discovering the true, the good, and the beautiful in their studies through the great books and student
life. Then the graduates have
the mission of promoting the true, the good, and the beautiful in
whatever careers they choose, no matter where they are. May God grant the graduates the faith, the
strength, and the positive attitude to let nothing discourage them. The quest continues after graduation to come
a little closer to the fullness of truth and its understanding which is beyond
us and is found only in God, who is truth.
Where elements of the truth do exist, the mission includes recognizing
them and then building upon them.
The true, the good, and the
beautiful are intertwined. Truth
will lead one to the good and the
beautiful. Fr. Robert Barron, the
author of the widely acclaimed video, “The Catholicism Series”, used another approach to evangelization.......show
the beauty in the Church as Chartres, the Sistine Chapel, Mother Theresa's nuns, etc. Then beauty will lead to the true and the
good. Any one of the three will
ultimately lead to the other two. Can
it be that the key to the restoration of the entire social order as God
intended may be found in the true, the good, and the beautiful? After all, God is truth; God is good; God is
love. Truth is beautiful; good is
beautiful. Christian love is good;
Christian love is beautiful. Can
it be said that the true, the good, and the beautiful, is a foretaste of
Heaven?
How Does Thomas Aquinas College (TAC)
Prepare Their Students for This Great Mission?
First and foremost, TAC is a
Christ centered school, one of the few Catholic colleges that have not lost
their original mission by being corrupted with creeping secularism which has
overtaken much of the world. Thomas
Aquinas College maintains its Catholic identity without compromise and is
firmly faithful to the Magisterium of the Church
and the principles of St. Pope John Paul's
Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church). For the complete original text, go to:
(http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_15081990_ex-corde-ecclesiae_en.html. It advocates that
Catholic colleges maintain their Catholic identity. Accordingly, professors of Theology take an
oath of fidelity to Church teaching, pledging that they will not teach anything
that contradicts it so that the students will grow in the faith and their
understanding of it.
TAC and a number of other Catholic colleges have initiated a lawsuit against the Obama Administration regarding the Health Care Mandate, which forces Catholic institutions to violate Church teaching regarding contraceptive coverage, including abortifacients and possibly abortion. In sum TAC aspires to not only prepare the student for success in this life, but also for the ultimate goal......eternal life with God.
The school aspires to develop
virtue not only in the curriculum, but also in student life. The College has a strict dress code, and
Stephanie tries to teach her young sister about modest, yet fashionable
clothing (see www.purefashion.com
and www.catholicmodesty.com).
There is also an evening curfew and men are never allowed in any women's
dorm. Nevertheless, dormitory buildings
and individual rooms are not locked unless the student so chooses.
There is an
atmosphere of trust even in regard to visitors.
There is no cashier in the cafeteria, no posted prices, or even a
suggested donation. Meals are served to
all and the administration confides that they will leave a donation. Invariably, they do. Two years ago, our family stayed in one of
their trailers for visitors. We received
no bill, but we honored the trust the institution had in us.
There are
opportunities for outreach to the youth of Santa Paula Confirmation
instruction. TAC students are well
represented at the “Walk
for Life”
in San Francisco. Periodically they
silently pray in front of an abortion clinic in Ventura.
Last Advent a large group of students invaded a Ventura, CA mall and sang Christmas carols. Hear them by going to my Blog #130 or
clicking on http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/news/student-flash-mob-goes-viral-appears-ewtn.
On campus there are food drives, blood drives, and fund raisers. When a friend of the College is in need,
students offer up sacrifices and prayers.
The focus is
upon academics; yet the whole person is not neglected. There is an excellent campus ministry
program with retreats, devotions, daily Mass, and an excellent intramural
sports program. Our daughter Stephanie participated in many of the weekly social
functions......parties, dances, hikes, theater, music recitals, etc. Her high school varsity experience makes her
a standout in basketball and her team won the intramural championship. Stephanie is not coming home
immediately because she has to attend two weddings within a week after
graduation. Thus it's not only work and
study, but also a lot of clean wholesome fun.
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A great start to a fabulous learning
environment is sunny Southern
California just northwest of the Los Angeles city limits in the mountains above
Santa Paula about a half hour from the Pacific Ocean. See the video on the home page of http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/ and the 360 degree tour at http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/admission/360%C2%B0-tour. The
campus was once a bustling ranch, donated for this great enterprise a little
after its founding in 1971 by a group of mostly laymen led by the founding
president, Dr. Ronald P. McArthur (see http://thomasaquinas.edu/about/brief-history-thomas-aquinas-college). God provides! The scenery there
is breathtaking with the college being nestled in a bowl surrounded by
mountains with a newly constructed cathedral sized chapel standing out as shown in the photo at the top. That together with beautifully well kept
landscaping, ponds, gardens, & an orange grove plus Spanish colonial type
architecture makes it perhaps the most beautiful college campus in the
world. The functioning pendulum and
statues of great scholars such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, their
Dominican patron, and St. Albert the Great, further give a great learning
atmosphere. Click on http://www.thomasaquinas.edu The very
scholarly St. Bernadine of Siena Library with its many rare books is another
big plus.
There is so much of the true, the good,
and the beautiful in the majestic Chapel of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity
and its magnificent architecture.
Recently constructed and full of art and symbolism, it dominates the
campus and gives the visitor a heavenly place of worship and prayer to savor
and enjoy while receiving a taste of the divine. Much of any Mass there is in Latin. We attended one Liturgy on a Saturday morning
two years ago, using the old Tridentine Mass which was completely in
Latin. I thought I was in a time machine going back to the 1950s as a kid. They
have a staff of full time priests to attend to the spiritual development of the
students as well. The one Dominican
scholar on the staff, Fr. Michael Chabarek and another on the way for next year
give a Dominican presence as the patron of the college would want. Most of the students attend daily Mass and
each dorm has prayer to end the day.
Often they participate in rosary walks for spiritual and physical fitness
in the pleasantly warm climate and scenery all year round.
Modus
Operandi. The graduation program
booklet provides an excellent summary of what TAC is trying to do: “Following St. Thomas Aquinas, the College
affirms that the aim of Catholic liberal education is the union of human wisdom
and divine truth. Through small seminars,
tutorials, and laboratories, the College seeks this union by exposing students
to the depths of human wisdom, as drawn from the great books of Western
civilization, and to the heights of divine truth, as drawn from the Catholic
faith”. It then quotes the advice of St.
Thomas to a student: “Do not try to plunge immediately into the ocean of
learning, but go by way of little streams; for difficult things are more easily
mastered once you have overcome the easier ones.” Thus the students at TAC “go by way of little
streams ---by each of the liberal arts to the highest sciences, philosophy and
theology--- so that in the end they may come with assurance to the Font of all
knowledge and life, the Well-Spring of all action and desire: God.” At the same time the different subjects are
to a large extent cross disciplinary with a beautiful integration of knowledge
as a whole with Theology at the center, tying it all together as advocated by
Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman in his “Idea of a University”.
Senior
Thesis. This integration was evident in the titles of the senior theses of
each graduate. My daughter Stephanie's
thesis integrated a gem of literature and Theology....... “The Clerk's Tale':
and Insufficient Account of How to Accept Trial from God.” Other theses showing this integration
include:
“The Wealth of Nations and the Pursuit of Happiness”;
“The Importance of Emotions and the Insufficiency of Mathematics in a Correct Understanding of Music”;
“The Importance of Emotions and the Insufficiency of Mathematics in a Correct Understanding of Music”;
“Technology in the
Intellectual Life: The Place of Modern Technology in the Life of a Christian”;
“Render to God What Is God's: A Defense of the Natural
Law as the Foundation of the Political System”; “On the Morality of Human
Genetic Modification”;
“Theirs Was the Task and Nobly They Performed It': A
Defense of the United States Constitution and Its Promotion of Happiness”;
“For Suffering, It Seems, Is Infinite, and Our Capacity Without
Limit': An Investigation into the T Transformative Power of Emotional Pain in
C.S. Lewis' Till We have Faces”;
“When Pride and a Little Scratching Pen Have Dried and
Split the Hearts of Men': The Impoverishment of Human Knowledge and the Role of
Beauty in Science”;
“On the Apparent Conflict Between the Common Good and
Human Rights”;
“The Holy Cosmos: Creation, Communication, and Natural
Science”;
“I
Have, However, Cogitating with Myself, Seen Further...': A Comparison of
William Harvey and Isaac Newton with Regard to Final Causality”;
“The
Power of the Society Can Never Be Supposed to Extend Farther Than the Common Good': Why Religion is a Common Good and How the First Amendment Protects it”;
“The
Role of Religion in Government”;
“Life's
Work: The Relationship of Political Virtue to the Happiness of Every Man”;
“An
Exposition of Newton's Two Lunar Theories: On the Importance and Utility of
Natural Philosophy”;
“Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You”;
“Subdue the Earth: A Defense of the Importance and
Necessity of Manual Labor”;
Their senior thesis tends to be more
interdisciplinary, but any research they do in their careers will probably be
much more specific in a secular area. Nevertheless, they will be able to bring
in a broader perspective and at least some Christian and ethical values without
calling it that.......directly or indirectly at least a little of the true, the
good, and the beautiful.
The
Curriculum. Being ranked among America’s Top Colleges by the U.S. News
& World Report, Forbes, and the Princeton Review, Thomas Aquinas College is
probably the best Catholic liberal arts college in the country (See http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/about/press-releases). Furthermore,
the Cardinal Newman Society (http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org)
named it as one of America's top eight “joyfully Catholic” colleges…..among
only 22 it recommended as faithfully Catholic. The yield rate of 63% of those accepted for
admission actually attending is one of the tops in the country, indicating that
TAC is probably the first choice of most who apply.
The
entire very demanding standard curriculum for all students is based upon
reading the great books in the original such as Aristotle & Augustine for
Philosophy, Aquinas for Theology with some parts in the original Latin, Euclid
for Geometry with his original proofs & propositions, Dalton & Einstein
for Physics, Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, etc. in
literature.
Each
semester the student receives grades in the general areas of Philosophy,
Theology, Mathematics, Natural Science, Seminar in the classics of literature, plus
two years of Latin and one year of music.
With each year the depth of study increases. The graduates receive a general degree in
Liberal Arts, which due to the program’s emphasis, comes close to a
conventional major in Philosophy and Theology.
One Theology major, after some teaching experience at a Catholic school, searched
the many Catholic colleges for a doctoral program. He discovered that the Theology professors
that he would most like to study under teach at TAC, which does not offer
graduate studies. Nevertheless, the
scholars there still do research and publish.
Reading
and discussing these original works puts the student in the shoes of the
pioneer intellectuals and scientists, following in their footsteps in the quest
for truth through the centuries and encountering some of the same obstacles,
road blocks, contradictions, twists, and turns in their quest for the
truth. The student goes through the same
discovering and reasoning processes as the original scholars to obtain insights
and arrive at much of the truth in the advancement of knowledge and the
discovery of the truth throughout history…….Theology, Philosophy, Mathematics,
and the empirical sciences with labs.
Today we build upon it through faith and reason as brought out by St.
Pope John Paul II in his encyclical, “Fides et Ratio” (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/JP02/). Then we will achieve the ideal advocated by
Pope Benedict XVI.......to learn to know the truth and establish a personal
relationship with it.
The
spirit of the school can perhaps be summarized in conserving the beauty of the
past and the foundation of truth discovered by our forefathers and then
building on that, come closer to the fullness of the truth through faith and
reason while developing virtue and closeness to God.
The
small classes (less than 20 students) with a total enrollment of 358 are based
upon the Socratic Method (mainly discussion) with an emphasis upon rhetoric and
developing the mind. No lectures or reading an author's regurgitated version of a
well known work, nor multiple choice tests; it's all discussion and essay. Classroom
discussion even spills over into the cafeteria after class. It’s a very accepting Christ centered, great
books school, where they read the original authors, not something regurgitated
in a textbook……. The focus is on discussion, writing, and rhetoric to train the
students to express themselves clearly and logically.
Furthermore,
the students learn how to learn. That
is the ability to pick out the most important and learn that well. Placing priorities on the important is the
key to time management. The goal is to
develop the mind so that one can learn by one's self without the need of any
professor. At the same time the students
learn to apply principles from known situations to the new, the strange, and
the different.......to solve problems very different from classroom
examples. In sum TAC teaches the student
how to think. Thus one medical doctor
testified that his education at TAC was most responsible for his success. Another alumnus thrived in his graduate
architectural program, despite omitting the prerequisite courses. Another grad, having finished near the top of
her class in an accelerated nursing program, credited the critical thinking
skills she learned at TAC.
After
her freshman year, Stephanie attended a Bible Study
session at our parish and already stood out as being very articulate with her
intelligent contributions. Her rhetorical skills gained and intellectual
foundation gained at Thomas Aquinas College really stood out.
What do
they do with their Liberal Arts Degrees?
The students receive a general degree in Liberal Arts, quite equivalent
to majors in Philosophy and Theology which will serve as a good foundation for
a variety of fields. The top ten career
fields of TAC grads are: 1) Education,
2) Business, 3) Medicine, 4) Priesthood &/or Religious Life (10% of all
graduates), 5) Law, 6) Public Service/Military, 7) Technology, 8) The Arts
& Architecture, 9) Finance, and 10) The Media. Other fields include lay parish ministry,
information technology, and the most important job of all......being a full
time mother.
Often
companies prefer liberal arts generalists with good minds ground in basic
skills and then train the very adaptable and teachable young grads in their own
way because training in many technical skills and procedures quickly become
outdated. Liberal arts majors are
usually better able to see the social consequences of business decisions than
the technocrats who are simply focused upon profit maximization. Others go on to graduate school to pursue a
variety of specialties……law, business, medicine, education, doctoral studies,
etc. About a third of MBA (Masters in
Business Administration) graduate students in
country are liberal arts majors.
TAC's Office of Career Advisement is a big help in choosing a career
path.
TAC
graduates have an excellent preparation for graduate school as observed by
professors who have had them in their advanced courses. They are impressed by TAC grads with their broad
background; knowing how to think; being at ease with a broad range of subjects;
superior ability to reason; excellent preparation in philosophy; among the most
widely read; unusual ability to reflect effectively on what is read and to
state and defend positions in discussion and writing; intellectual integrity;
etc. “They care very much about what
they believe, but they care as much about believing what the evidence and
arguments available to them best support, and they are therefore tolerant of
and indeed eager to hear alternative views and reasonable objections to what
they think. In sum, they are a joy to
have in class”.
Liberal
Arts and Technology. David Langley took another path. Common is the Three
and Two Plan where a student goes to a liberal arts college, taking social
studies, humanities, Math through Calculus, General Physics, and General
Chemistry. Then they take the next two
years to obtain a degree at an Engineering School. David had his sights on the prestigious
MIT. But first he chose to study three
years at TAC in order to be better prepared to study a more specific branch of
science later on. David has no regrets. “Surrounded by tutors, priests, and friends
who have a genuine love for truth, goodness, and beauty, I have developed a
keener sense of what it means to live a virtuous life....I think I am also a
better listener and a better learner. I
have learned to look at an argument, written or spoken, and find the errors or
truth--- and that will serve me well in the years to come.” At TAC the object is to search for the truth
and learn for the joy of learning, not simply to acquire the tools of the
trade.
“Working
through the College's sequential curriculum, I am pretty convinced that the
most effective way to learn is by going a little slower in the beginning----in
order to understand the principles and interconnectedness of things--- rather
than by learning through the method of sudden and rapid specialization. I am so grateful that my parents encouraged
me to develop my whole mind by studying mathematics, philosophy, and
theology......to grasp the ultimate significance of the subjects studied at a
more particular level.....first understanding the whole of which my interest is
just a part. I have discovered that
science is not merely a tool for solving practical problems or making the world
a better place; it is a means by which we can grow in wisdom and gain a more
complete understanding of the material order in nature--- and that reveals
something about the mind of God.” This
Fall the Jamison Group is sending David to MIT with opportunities to do
research on neglected tropical diseases.
Stephanie
has truly grown into a woman of God, willing to help people. This Fall she will be teaching second or third
grade, first as an apprentice at one of the prestigious Great Hearts Charter
Schools of Phoenix, which focuses upon the great books, from Hans Christian
Anderson to Mark Twain. In fact the
Great Hearts schools came on campus in competition with each other to recruit
TAC grads. Stephanie and a group of
other girls plan to live together in a house, a cross between a Christian
Community and I guess a sorority house.
A Few Thoughts. I have
wondered whether TAC is so engrossed in tradition and the great works of the
past that it might be neglecting the application of truth to problems
of the present. Then on second thought
the students are getting at least some of that in their outreach programs and
in their excellent program of bringing in nationally known speakers. Furthermore, when they return home during
breaks, they are brought down to earth and see the reality in the cities and
towns where they grew up. When they
descend from their little paradise at TAC and are suddenly thrust into jobs in
the real world which they have the mission of changing, it will be a significant adjustment and perhaps a reverse
culture shock similar to what returning Peace Corps volunteers often experience. Although the college perhaps should prepare
them for this transition, the graduates will do fine as their alumni have done
in the past.
The liberal arts
program of Thomas Aquinas College might be more complete and well rounded with a stronger dose
of the social sciences, particularly economics and the social teachings of the
Church as developed by a pioneer in social change, Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum in 1891 and updated with new perspectives by his successors to be applicable to
new problems and realities over time.......Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno in 1931, St. John XXIII in Mater et Magistra in 1961, Paul VI in Octogesima Adveniens in 1971, St. John Paul II in the very philosophical Laborem Exercens in 1981 and Centesimus Annus in 1991, and Pope Benedict in Caritas in Veritate (Love of Truth) in 2009. It is remarkable how each Pontiff adapts Church social teaching to new problems of changing times without contradicting his predecessors, always reinforcing them. Studying these documents in addition to the first two already in the curriculum ---all within the context of the times of each--- gives lessons in both history and sustainable economic development as well as insights to the major issues of today together with an appreciation of the evolution of Church social teaching......the true, the good, the beautiful, and the wisdom in it all. For a complete list of all the social encyclicals with a summary and full text of each plus Gaudium et Spes of Vatican II and the 1971 Justicia in Mundo of the Synod of Bishops, see https://educationforjustice.org/catholic-social-teaching/encyclicals-and-documents.
Commencement 2014
The Baccalaureate Mass was
concelebrated mostly in Latin by several priests with Edwin Cardinal O'Brien
presiding. The student choir sang
beautifully with traditional music mostly in Latin and some Gregorian Chant. It gave us a little taste of heaven, although
I would have liked to have seen more participation by the congregation. After serving as Archbishop of Baltimore,
Cardinal O'Brien was appointed as the Grand Master of the Equestrian Order o
the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem. My
brother John has the great honor of being a Knight of the Order. In the 1970s, the Cardinal served as an Army
Chaplain in the jungles of Vietnam with the 82nd airborne
Division. In the late 1990s he served as
Bishop of the Archdiocese for the Military Services. Other commencement speakers in the past
include Blessed Mother Theresa, Congressman Henry J. Hyde, Jeremiah Denton,
and several Cardinals. The diplomas were
written completely in Latin. My deceased
parents would have been so proud of Stephanie since they loved the great books
and Latin. At the cocktail and supper
the previous evening, Stephanie wore her grandmother's favorite dress and
received numerous complements. In the
photo below she’s with her Polish mother, Jadwiga, her father, and a Polish Dominican priest on
the staff, Fr. Michael Chabarek. See
more at http://thomasaquinas.edu/news/slideshow-alumni-parents-associations-host-dinner-seniors-parents.
Cardinal O’Brien stated in his address that
Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome are the pillars of western civilization. They searched for truth and we build upon
what they discovered and developed. Each
of the three pillars must reinforce each other.
The Enlightenment rejected Jerusalem and civilization collapsed to a
large extent. For the same reason,
countries fell into persecution and oppression during the French Revolution,
under Nazism and Communism, etc. We are
on a pilgrimage to our ultimate destination, heaven. Our culture is confused on truth. Today it's
“my truth” vs “your truth” and the only way to reconcile them is through the
dictatorship of relativism. St. John
Paul II witnessed to the truth and gave the world a new birth of freedom in his
encyclicals, “The Splendor of Truth” and “Faith and Reason” (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/JP02/). Reasoning helps us to arrive at the truth and
that can be exhilarating.
 |
| Chairman of the Board of Governors R. Scott Turicchi presents Cardinal O'Brien with the St. Thomas Aquinas Medallion. |
Senior
Address. Felicity Seely, Stephanie's
Freshman and Sophomore year roommate, delivered the Senior Address on
truth. Christ came to witness to the
truth. St. Thomas Aquinas devoted his
life to the search for truth. She
exhorted us to be open to the truth even if it means to feel stupid and change
one's mind. Truth fulfills if we have
faith in its depth. Aspects of the truth
must be integrated because truth is one; it must be an integrated view of the
world through Christ. If an idea does
not fit, it must be rejected or reexamined.
As we share ourselves, truth looks for the common good. The truth is in Christ and His Church. God will enlighten us to spread that
truth. The power of truth changes us.
 |
| Felicity Seely delivers the Senior Address on truth. |
Most
touching was the special honor given to the deceased Kent Moore, one of
Stephanie's friends, who would have been one of the graduates. He tragically ended up as a martyr for the
pro-life cause in the “Walk Across
America” in the summer of 2012. His
lovely parents, whom I had the privilege to meet at the graduation, exhibited such saintly
courage and faith through it all. They reconciled with the man who accidentally
hit him with his truck in the early morning hours. For details see my blog #88 at http://paulrsebastianphd.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html.
At
the reception I tried to congratulate every graduate I could identify with
a simple exhortation to never forget their great mission to spread and promote
the true, the good, and the beautiful wherever they are and in whatever they
do. I also asked what they intend to do
now. The answer was to a large
extent.......change the world for Christ and further His kingdom. One graduate plans to become a contemplative
nun to pray all of her classmates through their great missions. Several aspire to work as a team to start a
similar great books college in the East; the leader will prepare himself on the
business end of it and the others on the academic side. Sarah Majkowski dreams of doing the same in
Canada. Abbey Quinan will follow in the footsteps of the great healer in
nursing, another will do the same in medicine.
Sebastian Lemmon aspires to go into movie production and bring back the
best of movies which we lost after the days of the silver screen.......movies
that show the true, the good, and the beautiful; movies that inspire and
refresh rather than shock and appeal to our lower instincts. Another wants to go into theater and
music. One aspires to get into politics. Another plans to go into journalism; others
into engineering and business. Many more
aspire to shape lives as teachers and parents.
There is hope for America.......a lot of hope!
Student Aid. TAC does not give scholarships as such, but does facilitate loans, gives ample opportunities for work study and obtains sponsors for the very needy students. Through all this, students leave with minimal debt......a maximum of $16,000. For example, Stephanie passed up two scholarships at two great Christ centered Catholic universities that paid most of her tuition, since she was enthralled with this great books school, which she heard about on a campus visit to one of them. Instead of scholarships at other good schools, she chose to work 13 hours per week for the entire four years plus two summers, first with janitorial work and then in the cafeteria. Furthermore, she took advantage of a government grant (FAFSA) and a loan. Being so far away, she could only come home to us in southeastern Ohio in the foothills of Appalachia for Christmas and a couple of weeks in the summer.
Alumni
Loyalty. TAC has been recognized by the rating agencies as having the most
loyal alumni in the country, right up there with the Ivy League
schools. I noticed families that send one
sibling after another here and also through the generations. Dr. Langley M.D., a father of ten children,
commented that every year he comes for the graduation of a couple of his
grandchildren. All six children of Laura
Berquist ('75) are TAC alums. Already
Stephanie is recruiting her kid brother to attend.
He will be attending the two week summer program for high school seniors
in July. Perhaps the experience will wet
his appetite for the truth and he will follow in his sister's footsteps.
The
ratings by different entities best summarize this blog. The 2013 Princeton Review of the Best 377
Colleges gives TAC the highest possible rating for academics and
financial aid (99) and includes TAC in its list of “Best Value Colleges”. It rates TAC among the top schools in Quality
of Life (97), top 15% of American four-year colleges, top 20 for “Most
Religious Students”, “Happiest Students”, and “Best Classroom Experience”. It observes that TAC “takes learning
seriously for its own sake, not just as preparation for a job”; has “a strong
Catholic identity and a “rigorous curriculum” where “professors lead you to
truth without forcing it on you” and “you get all kinds of people here, but one
thing they have in common is a desire to search for the truth”.
The U.S. News & World Report:
Best Colleges puts TAC in the top tier among all liberal arts colleges,
top 25 for least debt among graduates, top 40 in “Best Value Colleges”, most
popular among applicants, and most loved by alumni. Kiplinger’s: 100 Best Values in Private
Colleges rates TAC as #3 for lowest total cost per year and #9 for
lowest average debt at graduation. The Association
of College Trustees and Alumni rates TAC in the top 2% of the country’s
major colleges and universities, the highest rating of “A” for strength of
curriculum, and one of only three colleges in the USA to receive a perfect
score for ensuring that students study the seven key areas of composition,
literature, American history, foreign language, mathematics, science, and
economics.
High
school seniors may obtain a great preview of TAC and a stimulating taste of the
true, the good, and the beautiful by attending its two week High School
Great Books Program during the summer following their junior year. See my blog #140 and the TAC website at http://thomasaquinas.edu/admission/summer-program-blog/?cat=51
for 2014 Summer Program Blog which has considerable detail with hundreds of
photos and http://thomasaquinas.edu/admission/high-school-summer-program
for a description of the program. Most
of the 135 students who attend each year enjoy it so much that they end up
being students at Thomas Aquinas College a year later.
As
parents we saw in Stephanie during the four years marked intellectual and
spiritual growth. She seemed to be at
ease at the graduation functions and socially poised, introducing her parents
to many students, parents, and faculty.
I cannot say that our new graduate has definitively found the true, the
good, and the beautiful, but without question, she's well on her way. Stephanie will certainly promote it wherever
she is and in whatever she does as she makes significant progress toward a
greater understanding of the fullness of the truth.
