Reaching for heaven

At Wyoming Catholic College, the great outdoors meets the Great Books in a big way . . .

There’s something different about Wyoming Catholic College.

This traditional Catholic College, which just graduated its first class of 30 students in May, is truly in “God’s country.” The school is housed on an interim campus and has plans to build a 400-student permanent campus just outside Lander, Wyo.

It offers a bachelor of liberal arts degree based on a Great Books Program, and its regulations are strict – no cell phones are allowed, and there is limited internet access. If a student enters the opposite sex’s dorm, the offense is punishable by immediate explusion.

Nature and humanity

A major factor setting this school apart is how it uses the beauty of nature to teach its students about God and leadership. During the first three weeks of freshman year, every student goes on a camping/leadership trip in the Wind River Mountains, accompanied by a chaplain and an instructor from the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). During the year, all students go on three more camping trips — including snow camping and trekking across frozen lakes. Freshmen also take one year of equestrian classes.

“During these camping trips, the students are taught leadership skills and conflict resolution,” said Mark Randall, vice president for Institutional Advancement. “Once they’ve conquered the rigorous outdoors, they can now conquer the rigorous academics.”

All of WCCs founders appreciated the values instilled through hiking, camping and riding — and they wanted it to be a part of the school’s curriculum.

“It teaches you things you can’t learn in the classroom,” said WCC president Fr. Robert Cook. “Nature is God’s first classroom. Riding a horse is a good way to learn that you are not in charge. It’s another experience in leadership because horses need to be led — but they know if you’re not ready.”

Wyoming Catholic College strives to achieve authentic human interaction among the students.Marguerite Nemeth, who is just beginning her junior year this fall, noticed the difference when she returned to Florida for summer break.

“When I come home, I see how different conversations can be with friends,” she said. “In Wyoming we have conversations face to face. I don’t have to worry about people texting someone else while we’re talking. People at home have 20,000 ‘friends’ on Facebook. In Wyoming, friends come and knock on your door to find you. You see how technology has impoverished our culture. You realize how wonderful it is to be able to speak to someone who doesn’t have an iPod on.”

Foundation

WCC’s founders like to say that the school’s genesis was truly “providential.” In 2003, when Bishop David Ricken was the ordinary of the Cheyenne diocese, he organized an adult catechetical seminar. He told the audience that “Wyoming has no Catholic college … yet.” The audience jumped on his word “yet” and asked if he was planning to form a college. Actually, he wasn’t. His audience, however, said that they would support him if he did.

In short order, Bishop Ricken met with Dr. Robert Carlson, then a humanities and philosophy professor at Casper College, and Fr. Cook, then a pastor in Casper, to discuss the matter. They agreed to undertake a step-by-step process to see if God truly wanted a Catholic college in the state. They found confirmation at every step: 48 pieces of property were offered for sale or as a gift to the College, a $300,000 donation came in and 175 professors asked to join the faculty.

“We had the constant help of the Holy Spirit,” Fr. Cook explained.

In terms of nurturing the Spirit today, WCC has “practicums” — optional seminars about various devotionals or liturgical practices. Most students attend.

“Mass is offered three times a day, and 100% of the students go to Mass more than once a week,” said Fr. Cook. “Retreats and spiritual direction are available to all students.”

Curriculum

The college strives to offer a traditional liberal arts education for the whole person in all three dimensions — mind, body and spirit.

“Wyoming Catholic College takes the poetic approach to education — it’s learning by doing,” said Bishop James Conley, auxiliary bishop of Denver and a member of WCC’s Founders’ Committee.

“The student is deeply immersed in truth, goodness and beauty — the great outdoors meets the Great Books! They read the classics of Western culture and memorize poetry. They spend time looking up at the stars, riding horses, hiking in the mountains, developing great friendships. This is not the scientific approach to the Great Books. They fall in love with learning by being born in wonder,” he said.

WCC’s founders are passionate about the Great Books and have assembled a world class faculty.

“The Great Books introduced me to the greatest thinking in our Western culture,” said Bishop Conley, who converted to Catholicism through a Great Books program at the University of Kansas in the 1970s.

“These books have stood the test of time. They are classics, they endure. I was just a public school kid in the 1960s, and education was all experimental. I had never read a serious book until I went to college. The first book they had me read was the Odyssey, and I fell in love with it,” he explained.

Consequently, the Odyssey is one of the books that WCC students read during their freshman year.

WCC students experience an integrated curriculum which builds on itself over four years. They study Greek history, literature, theology, philosophy, math, science, art history, music and horsemanship. The freshman reading list features a who’s who in classics: Aristotle, Homer, Herodotus, Plato and Plutarch — to name a few. And all students learn to speak Latin. This has created, they quip, one of the largest Latin-speaking communities outside the Vatican.

Nemeth, the student from Florida, recalls the first time she visited WCC as a high school student. She had heard about the college through a Latin teacher in her home state, and her parents providentially had two free plane tickets which were used to fly her out.

“I sat in on a freshman Euclidian Geometry class, and near the end they said the way our minds perceive the truths of mathematics is analogous to the way the angels perceive God,” she explained. “When we study math, we can contemplate truth without the crutches of physical images or physical ‘stuff.’ No one has ever physically seen an infinite straight line, and yet we can understand what it is and prove things in geometry.

“Analogously, the way the angels perceive God is not a physical kind of knowing in pictures or colors: They just ‘see’ Him, analogous to the way we ‘see,’ for example, an infinite straight line. After this, I realized that I had to come to this school.”

Sabrina Arena Ferrisi is a Legatus Magazine staff writer.