Cast out into the Deep.
Luke 5:4
“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!