Those schools are both selective and exclusive, due to the fact that they have strict standards that they expect their students to maintain on campus.
Wyoming Catholic College also doesn’t take federal funding. Like Hillsdale, which my sister is loving. I’m a TAC grad myself, respect and admire the school, but am keeping my options open for my own kids. No matter what, if my children want me to assist with their college education, it will be a Catholic school we both agree on, or local, where they don’t have to deal with dorm life.
Jim Towey, President of Ave Maria University ... Excerpt from prepared text of his inaugural address given on Friday.
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/oct/08/jim-towey-president-ave-maria-university-excerpt-p/
Editor’s note: Jim Towey has been inducted as the new president of Ave Maria University. Here is an excerpt from the prepared text of his inaugural address given on Friday.
I believe that Ave Maria University can play a pivotal role in reforming Catholic higher education and American culture. The need has never been greater.
Too often students leave high school and arrive at college and find the values their parents instilled in them under constant attack. They are encouraged to believe that hooking up is better than getting hitched. They are urged to live recklessly, to the point where binge drinking has nearly become a rite of passage for freshmen.
The prevalent secular ideology on American campuses, including many faith-based ones, seems to assert that absolute moral truth does not exist, and that faith and reason are enemies.
The Church disagrees. Six weeks ago in Madrid at World Youth Day, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI met with a group of young university professors. He himself had been one in Bonn and to this day has not lost his love of the academy.
The Pope said to the group, “Always remember that teaching is not just about communicating content, but about forming young people. You need to understand and love them, to awaken their innate thirst for truth and their yearning for transcendence.”
I would like to touch upon what I believe the three hallmarks of Ave Maria University must be as it accomplishes this task.
First, academic excellence in the liberal arts tradition. Pope Benedict rightly decried in his Madrid address an approach to education that simply prepares students to satisfy society’s demand for labor without leading them in the pursuit of truth. He said, “The Gospel message perceives a rationality inherent in creation and considers man as a creature participating in, and capable of attaining to, an understanding of this rationality.”
He continued, “The University thus embodies an ideal which must not be attenuated or compromised, whether by ideologies closed to reasoned dialogue or by truckling to a purely utilitarian and economic conception which would view man solely as a consumer.”
As we ponder the Pope’s words, we must be careful in how we apply them. His warning does not mean that Ave Maria should ignore the development of professional and pre-professional programs; indeed our mission statement requires us to.
But it does mean that our students must become critical thinkers, competent writers, and perpetual students of life. Of course, we hope that their studies in theology and philosophy, the lungs of any true Catholic university, will breathe life into their vocations.
It is our desire that each and every graduate leaves this campus as a responsible adult and better human being. The Catholic, liberal arts education we offer at Ave Maria University must be transformative.
The second distinctive trait of Ave Maria must be that we are firmly rooted in our Catholic faith while remaining fully open to the world. I say this because we are called to engage the culture, not flee it, or our convictions.
Students should not be sheltered from society and the so-called “real world” that awaits their full participation. When an Ave Maria student graduates, he or she should be able to thrive in the midst of people who do not pray like them, think like them, vote like them or worship like them. That is why during my tenure we will look to expand study abroad, service learning, campus ministry initiatives and student internships. The more outside engagement, the better.
The freedom students experience away from home should lead to the formation of virtue and a deepening of faith, as befits their God-given dignity. Such things cannot be coerced but should be encouraged, and I pledge myself to that task. I believe we can foster the responsible exercise of freedom and promote open debate, without abandoning our convictions, provided that we remain rooted in our Catholic faith and open to the world.
The third hallmark of Ave Maria University must be our unity. In Calcutta, Mother Teresa’s tomb has the simple inscription from the Gospel of John: “Love one another as I have loved you.” St. Paul warns that we can move mountains and work wonders but if we have not love, then we have gained nothing.
Twenty-one years ago, the apostolic constitution governing Catholic universities was issued, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, that is, “From the Heart of the Church.” It recognized the importance of having an authentic human community grounded in “a common dedication to truth, a common vision of the dignity of the human person and, ultimately, the person and message of Christ which gives the Institution its distinctive character.”
The document goes on to call for mutual respect, sincere dialogue, and protection of the rights of individuals. My friends, those characteristics of a Catholic university serve as a “sign of contradiction” within academia.
And from its founding, Ave Maria University has held itself to a higher standard – to be a light to academia by the example of our unity and our love for one another, even in the midst of reasonable disagreement. It would be hypocritical for us to present ourselves as an authentically Catholic institution if our relationships with one another are not rooted in Christ.
Imagine a campus free of the defects of pettiness, jealousy, intellectual bullying, and spiritual arrogance. Such an environment in our faculty lounges, administrative offices, classrooms, and residence halls would place Ave Maria University at the forefront of the new evangelization. Unity and intellectual charity will be the bond that perfects our scholarship and allows the “splendor of the truth” to shine.
I send donations to Wyoming Catholic College, because I think their frontier spirit is really cool. I don’t know if any of my Offspring would ever consider it, but it should be there for those who are the right people. (Maybe James, who seems to have no standards for personal comfort when there’s outdoorsiness to be done ... but he’s only 7.)
By the meaning you are using for “exclusive,” that wouldn’t apply to Boston College, Georgetown, or Notre Dame, referenced in the original post using the term. They do not have moral standards or expectations for students.
Maybe that post just meant “academically selective.”