Loaves and Fishes Blog – Kateri College of the Liberal Arts

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Happy Thanksgiving!

May the blessings of God be upon our country, our families, and on our efforts to establish Kateri College!

We received notice yesterday that the State of New Mexico has recognized and approved Kateri College’s Articles of Incorporation as a nonprofit educational institution! We now will file with the Federal government to receive federal recognition as a 501c3 organization.

Please consider supporting our mission to start a new college in Gallup. It’s hard to believe, but no other Catholic college exists in New Mexico, Arizona, or Utah! Several pilot programs are present in Phoenix and Tucson, but no physical Catholic campuses are here. We aim to change that in order to offer a Catholic education that truly integrates both the liberal and the vocational arts to everyone, Catholic or non-Catholic, in the southwest and in the nation.

If you share our view that such a new approach to education is needed and necessary, please consider helping us financially. We would like to welcome our first class of students in the Fall of 2024. In order to do so, we need to raise 1.2 million dollars in the next two years! A monumental task but one which we can do first through God’s grace working through the generosity of you, our friends and benefactors.

You may now donate to Kateri College in two ways. You may send checks directly to Kateri College at 503 W. Historic Hwy 66, Suite A, Gallup, NM 87301. If the IRS approves our application by years’ end, then all donations are tax-deductible.

If you have concerns about donations definitely being tax-deductible for this tax year, then we have partnered with the Catholic People’s Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose primary focus is helping the Gallup diocese, https://www.catholicpeoplesfoundation.com, to accept donations on our behalf. Send checks to the Catholic People’s Foundation but earmarked for Kateri College and the CPF will hold all donations for Kateri. The CPF has also graciously allowed us to share office space with them and so we share the same mailing address: 503 W. Historic Hwy 66, Suite A, Gallup, NM, 87301.

In the words of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “God love you!”

Hands to the Plow Podcast

We have launched a podcast to discuss topics of Catholic education and culture. We have two episodes published on our site. We’d love for you to listen to them. You can subscribe and listen to Hands to the Plow on many platforms! Here’s a link to the central one and you can go from there: https://anchor.fm/katericollege

Remember to visit our site, www.katericollege.org, for updates on our mission!

The below image is the scene we discuss towards the beginning of our podcast when we first met Bishop James Wall. This is Bishop Wall with our Joseph in 2015.

How’s this going to work?

People have asked us, what will the curriculum look like at Kateri? We have put together a working curriculum which we’ll post soon but the following is what we envision generally.

The first two years will follow a core curriculum in traditional liberal arts courses – theology, philosophy, history, literature, mathematics and the sciences. However, as part of the curriculum and community life of the college, every student will participate in the fall and spring in a week-long community work project enabling them to gain practical, hands-on experience in trade fields such as construction, electrical work, plumbing work, masonry, culinary and or brewing work. Such practical service work will allow students the experience necessary to discern what type of specific trade God has created them with the gifts to do well and to enjoy. These service weeks will also provide credit hours toward the bachelors’ degree.

A student will declare a “major” in their third year but this major will be a specific trade skills track. During years three and four, as one would focus on courses within one’s major, so at Kateri will a student focus on courses within their trade track. Alongside the training courses, a student will continue to take a more limited number of academic courses and continue participating in the week-long service projects. In year four, each graduating senior will participate in a capstone project under the direction of a master tradesman in their particular area.

After four years, a student will have taken over 120 hours of course instruction, roughly 60 in the liberal arts and 60 in the practical arts. But, these two sides of learning are to be integrated fully such that they are never in competition or contradiction with each other.

This is a new venture and while we hope to be able to be accredited by one of the national accrediting agencies, we also acknowledge that path to accreditation could be a challenging one. However, accredited or not, the education the college will offer will be transformative for any young man or woman who goes through the program.

Duc in Altum

June 9, 2021

“Cast out into the Deep,” Our Lord tells us. We have decided to do just that. We have sold our home in Lincoln and moved to Gallup, New Mexico, in order to work to found a new type of college for our present times: Kateri College of the Liberal and Practical Arts.

We have worked for decades in higher education and increasingly see that the current education model is unsustainable — skyrocketing tuition costs coupled with increasingly worthless degrees in environments that are hostile to the faith and to true academic freedom.

What is needed is a new type of education which marries the finest of the liberal arts tradition to a practical, manual trade skill. Both areas have oddities that are unique to them. Many academics snobbishly dismiss manual labor as beneath them and many manual laborers snobbishly dismiss intellectual pursuits as above them. Both extremes are wrong!

We envision a college where young men and women engage in the traditional liberal arts courses of theology, philosophy, literature, mathematics, and the physical sciences in a core curriculum over the first two years and then focus on a trade art for the remaining two years. We hope to partner with local businesses and foundations who will help train and employ the students as interns and apprentices.

The mission of the college is to graduate young men and women who are able to think, analyze, and communicate effectively, but who also have a specific and marketable trade skill. We want well-rounded and well-grounded students who take seriously Christ’s calling for us to evangelize and share with others the Good News we have been given.

Because God has created us to be wholistic in mind, body, and soul, we envision a college where the spiritual life and growth of the student surpasses both the intellectual and practical growth. Kateri College will take particular care of providing an environment that nurtures the young person’s soul. The college will respect the maturity of its students precisely by demanding that they act like responsible adults and offering a living environment that best encourages virtuous living.

We’re embarking on this new adventure in June. We’re assembling our initial Board of Directors now. We then will work to establish Kateri College as a 1023 institution in New Mexico and then a 501c3 non-profit organization. In August, we plan to move into an RV as our full-time house on wheels! We will homeschool the children from the road while fundraising and promoting the idea of the new college. If you’d like to host a fundraising or promotional event, then please be in contact with us!

Duc in altum!