|
|
|
“OUTSTANDING ACADEMICS”
Princeton Review Gives College High Ratings for Academics, Financial Aid & Quality of Life
Thomas Aquinas College provides one of the best undergraduate educations in the country, according to The Princeton Review. The education services company features the College in the 2016 edition of its annual guide, The Best 380 Colleges. Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges are profiled in the publication, The Princeton Review’s flagship college guide.
Among the ratings for Thomas Aquinas College are scores of 95 for academics, 97 for quality of life, and 99 for financial aid. In this scoring system, 99 is the best possible score. Not only did Thomas Aquinas College receive a perfect rating for its financial aid program, it is the only Catholic college on The Princeton Review’s list of 20 “Great Financial Aid” schools. The guide also lists the College as one of its “Best Western” colleges.
“We are delighted that The Princeton Review has once again featured Thomas Aquinas College in its annual guide,” says the College’s president, Dr. Michael F. McLean. “Of particular note are the high scores we received for our academic and financial aid programs, and for our students’ ‘quality of life.’ Our goal has always been to provide the best education at the most affordable price, and The Princeton Review profile offers some strong evidence that we are succeeding.”
Full story 
Other College Guide Reviews
|
|
|
|
CONVOCATION 2015
Bishop Olmsted to Preside at Start of Academic Year
On August 24 some 102 freshmen from across the United States and abroad — the Class of 2019 — will mark the beginning of their four years of study at Thomas Aquinas College. To welcome the students at the formal start of the 2015-16 academic year, the Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted, Bishop of Phoenix, will offer the Convocation Mass of the Holy Spirit and preside over the matriculation ceremony.
Ordained a priest for the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, on July 2, 1973, Bishop Olmsted earned a master’s degree in theology and a doctorate in canon law at the Gregorian University in Rome. For nine years he served as Assistant at the Secretariat of State at the Holy See and provided spiritual direction for the American seminarians at the Pontifical North American College. In 1999, Pope St. John Paul II selected him to be the Bishop of Wichita, Kansas, and in 2003 he was appointed Bishop of Phoenix, Arizona, where he has remained ever since.
“We are honored that Bishop Olmsted would come join us as we begin the new academic year and receive our new students,” says Dean Brian T. Kelly. “We look forward to welcoming him on campus, to listening to his homily and matriculation remarks, and to beginning another year in our project of faithful Catholic liberal education.”
Full story
|
|
The Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted, Bishop of Phoenix |
|
|
FAITH IN ACTION
Highlights from the College’s Alumni Blog
• There are 62 priests among the Thomas Aquinas College alumni, but none, regrettably, in the College’s own Archdiocese of Los Angeles. By God’s grace, that will soon change. On August 8, Michael Masteller (’13) entered the Archdiocese’s St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo. “From the seminary, I can still see Topatopa,” he says of the mountain range that rises above the College’s campus. “I love Thomas Aquinas College. I love California. I love the Church. And all these things meet here.”
• An education success story comes out of Montrose, California, where St. Monica Academy is relocating — because it has outgrown its original campus in Pasadena. The K-12 school, founded in 2001 with 44 students, has seen its enrollment swell to 240. As a result it is moving this summer to the campus of a shuttered parochial school at Holy Redeemer Church, where it will open its doors at the start of the academic year. There are many ties between St. Monica’s and Thomas Aquinas College, starting with its headmaster, Marguerite (Ford ’79) Grimm, and the 10 other alumni on the school’s faculty. Like the College, St. Monica’s employs a classical curriculum and stresses fidelity to the teaching Church.
• “The return of summertime every year often recalls the years that will never return: the golden days of youth,” writes Sean Fitzpatrick (’02). The headmaster of Gregory the Great Academy in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a regular contributor to Crisis magazine, Mr. Fitzpatrick has opened an online conversation about summertime-reading books that arouse seasonal memories of childhood. “What books,” he asks, “should be brought to lakesides, porches, and hammocks? Which stories provide that return to the perennial glories of summer and the passing glories of childhood?”
Read the Faith in Action Blog
|
|
|
Michael Masteller (’13), with Archbishop José H. Gomez
 St. Monica Academy
 Sean Fitzpatrick (’02)
|
|
|
“CREDIBLE WITNESSES TO THE WORLD”
Thesis Titles and What’s Next for the
Thomas Aquinas College Class of 2015
Each year, starting in the fall and continuing well into the spring, the seniors of Thomas Aquinas College labor to create what will be the culmination of their four years of academic efforts — the senior thesis. Based on a subject of each student’s own choosing, and drawing from the College’s classical curriculum, the thesis represents its author’s effort to apply his or her education to a matter of scholarly and personal importance. A new slideshow on the College’s website features photographs of the members of the Class of 2015 and the titles of their senior theses.
Meanwhile, having completed their studies and graduated, the members of the Class of 2015 are beginning to make their mark in the world. Whether in the courtroom or the classroom, the marketplace or the monastery, the College’s newest graduates are committed to putting their faith, their talents, and their education to service as witnesses for the Kingdom of God. A new article on the College’s website provides a partial list of the vocations and careers that the members of the Class of 2015 are now pursuing.
Slideshow: Class of 2015 and Thesis Titles
Full story: What’s Next for the Class of 2015
|
|
The Class of 2015 and Thesis Titles
What’s Next for the Class of 2015
|
|
|
|
RAVE REVIEWS
Praise for Who Designed the Designer?
by Tutor Dr. Michael A. Augros (’92)
Alumnus and tutor Dr. Michael A. Augros (’92) recently appeared as a guest on the Catholic Answers Live radio program. There he discussed his new book, which makes a philosophical case for the existence of God, Who Designed the Designer? A Rediscovered Path to God’s Existence. Host Patrick Coffin called the book “a wonder-filled romp through the ‘first cause’ approach of Plato and Aristotle and the great Thomas Aquinas.”
Shortly thereafter, Dr. Jeffrey Mirus, president and founder of Trinity Communications, reviewed Who Designed the Designer? on CatholicCulture.org. In “God the Designer: Yes or No?,” Dr. Mirus calls Dr. Augros’ book “a resounding success” in its effort “to refute the many atheists who, especially in modern times, think they have successfully demolished the traditional arguments for the existence of God based on the necessity of a first cause or a prime mover.” Dr. Mirus adds that Dr. Augros “writes well and uses many entertaining examples, making a potentially dry topic extraordinarily readable.”
Finally, Dr. Augros’ book was the subject of a profile in The Tidings, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “The battle to prove or refute the existence of God by the New Atheists and the proponents of intelligent design is mostly waged in attack and defense of evidence,” writes author Kevin Theriault. By contrast, Mr. Theriault observes, Dr. Augros “takes a non-polemic approach, drawing readers along a reasoned pathway of general principles in order to see God’s handiwork for themselves.” Mr. Theriault further commends Who Designed the Designer? for demonstrating not only the existence of a creator, “but what God is and his attributes must be.”
Dr. Augros on Catholic Answers Live
Review in CatholicCulture.org
Profile in The Tidings
|
|
Dr. Michael A. Augros (’92)
|
|
|
