Overview of Thomas Aquinas College

Mission Statement

Thomas Aquinas College has a single mission: the liberal education of students according to their natural powers of reason illuminated by the light of the Catholic Faith. This mission is the end by which all means are judged – from customs of community life to curricular decisions and faculty appointments, to building design and forms of governance. +++

To accomplish its mission, the College has a single, substantially unvarying program with no majors, minors, or electives. It consists in an integrated and orderly study of the liberal arts and sciences, beginning with the fundamental arts of the trivium and quadrivium, proceeding through the natural and political sciences, and culminating in theology. The College achieves its mission chiefly through reflective consideration of seminal questions raised in classical texts. These texts – often referred to as the “Great Books” – are selected by the faculty under the guidance of the Catholic Read more… tradition. In accordance with this tradition, the works of St. Thomas Aquinas occupy a preeminent position in the College’s curriculum. +++

Classes are seminars and tutorials: groups of fifteen to twenty students discussing the readings under the guidance of a faculty member. A laboratory program provides students laboratory experience in addition to the reading of primary texts. Tutorials, seminars, and laboratories are complemented by a lecture and concert series. This offers students an opportunity to witness and discuss the scholarly and artistic works of the wider community. +++

The College’s educational principles and curriculum arise from an intellectual tradition which does not fluctuate with the vicissitudes of time, founded as it is in a perennial wisdom by which the truth and merit of new insights and discoveries may be best understood. The College aims to sustain the natural wonder of students, to develop their intellectual virtues, and to help them satisfy their desire to know things noble and worth knowing.

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