Christopher Wolfe: Inspired by Aquinas, aims to found new university
Like many academics, Christopher Wolfe has lots of ideas about what the ideal university should be. Unlike all but a handful, though, he’s decided to take action in a big way, by creating a new institution.
After close to 30 years at Marquette University, Wolfe, a political science professor known for his course on constitutional law that weeds out the formerly pre-law undergraduates from the future lawyers, will leave his tenured job to prepare full-time for the fall 2011 launch of a not-yet-named university in a location to be determined. It’s a dream he’s had since the 1980s.
Though Wolfe doesn’t yet know precisely what programs the institution will offer, how many students it will accommodate or where funding will come from, he does have a strong sense of the university’s core purpose: giving students “a unified, integrated conception of reality” based on the scholarship of St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century Roman Catholic thinker, and even further back to Classical thinkers like Aristotle.
“Contemporary higher education is increasingly specialized and disintegrated,” he said. “We want to go back to the kind of education where students develop a coherent understanding of deeply integrated areas of study.”
There are other institutions with a similar ethos, and the United States alone features half a dozen colleges and universities named after Aquinas, with differing levels of reliance on his philosophy. Thomas Aquinas College, in Santa Paula, Calif., offers an interdisciplinary curriculum with no majors, minors, electives or specializations. The college emphasizes “great books” and eschews lectures for tutorials, seminars and labs.
Read entire article at Inside Higher Ed
After close to 30 years at Marquette University, Wolfe, a political science professor known for his course on constitutional law that weeds out the formerly pre-law undergraduates from the future lawyers, will leave his tenured job to prepare full-time for the fall 2011 launch of a not-yet-named university in a location to be determined. It’s a dream he’s had since the 1980s.
Though Wolfe doesn’t yet know precisely what programs the institution will offer, how many students it will accommodate or where funding will come from, he does have a strong sense of the university’s core purpose: giving students “a unified, integrated conception of reality” based on the scholarship of St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century Roman Catholic thinker, and even further back to Classical thinkers like Aristotle.
“Contemporary higher education is increasingly specialized and disintegrated,” he said. “We want to go back to the kind of education where students develop a coherent understanding of deeply integrated areas of study.”
There are other institutions with a similar ethos, and the United States alone features half a dozen colleges and universities named after Aquinas, with differing levels of reliance on his philosophy. Thomas Aquinas College, in Santa Paula, Calif., offers an interdisciplinary curriculum with no majors, minors, electives or specializations. The college emphasizes “great books” and eschews lectures for tutorials, seminars and labs.