Interim President Takes Oath of Fidelity at Thomas Aquinas College
(April 30, 2009)
 SANTA
PAULA, CA—The chairman of the board of governors of Thomas
Aquinas College, Maria O. Grant, has announced that yesterday, at
11:15 a.m., in the presence of students and faculty in Our Lady
of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel, college chaplain and assistant
dean for religious affairs Rev. Cornelius Buckley, S.J., administered
the Oath of Fidelity to newly appointed interim president Peter
L. DeLuca, who also made a Profession of Faith. Mrs. Grant then
presented the presidential chain of office to president DeLuca.
This brief ceremony was followed by the college’s regularly
scheduled 11:30 a.m. Mass.
In remarks following the ceremony Mr. DeLuca said, “I was
greatly honored that Mrs. Grant and the Board of Governors chose
me to exercise the office of president.” “I am going to
do my very best,” he continued, “to live up to their confidence,
to preserve the College, protect it, and pass it on to my successor
in the way that I received it. I would like to ask everyone in the
Thomas Aquinas College community to assist me with your prayers
that I receive the necessary graces of office to faithfully carry
out the task that is before me.”
It has been two weeks since the tragic loss of president Thomas
E. Dillon in an automobile accident in Ireland, where he had traveled
on college business. Said Mrs. Grant, “Dr. Dillon’s death
has been a tremendous shock for all of us. But I have great assurance
that things are moving forward in an orderly way at Thomas Aquinas
College. I am confident that under Mr. DeLuca’s steady hand,
this interim period between Dr. Dillon’s death and the appointment
of a new president will go smoothly.”
PETER L. DELUCA III is interim president, treasurer,
and vice president for finance and administration of Thomas Aquinas
College. One of the founders of the college, he has been a member
of the Board of Governors since 1969 and of the teaching faculty
since 1971. He has also served as senior vice president and vice
president for development. A graduate in economics at St. Mary’s
College of California, Mr. DeLuca served as western director and
national director of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He then
worked as assistant to the president of Grant Oil Tool Co. and pursued
graduate studies at the University of Southern California.
ABOUT THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE:
Ranked the #5 “Best Value” in the country for 2008 among
all private institutions in the United States by The Princeton Review,
Thomas Aquinas College is a four-year, Catholic liberal arts college
with a fully-integrated curriculum composed exclusively of the Great
Books, the seminal works in the major disciplines by the great thinkers
who have helped shape Western civilization. There are no textbooks,
no lectures and no electives. Instead, under the guidance of faculty
members and using only the Socratic method of dialogue in classes
of no more than 20, students read and discuss the original works
of authors such as Euclid, Dante, Galileo, Descartes, the American
Founding Fathers, Adam Smith, Shakespeare, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton,
Einstein, Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine, and of course, St. Thomas
Aquinas. Graduates consistently excel in the many world-class institutions
at which they pursue graduate degrees in fields such as law, medicine,
business, theology and education. They have distinguished themselves
serving as lawyers, doctors, business owners, priests, military
service men and women, educators, journalists and college presidents.
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