Wyoming Catholic College is happy to announce that it has “met the accreditation standards of The Association for Experiential Education (AEE), a global community of experiential educators and practitioners with the shared goal of enriching lives through Experiential Education.”

This recognition is a welcome milestone in the College’s efforts to join a robust experiential education with a traditional Great Books program. “Accreditation by AEE means that our Experiential Leadership and Catholic Outdoor Renewal programs have been recognized for excellence,” said President Glenn Arbery, “and our whole team is to be congratulated. What we do in the outdoors complements and heightens what we do in the classroom with the Great Books–and that’s what our integrated curriculum is all about.”

Dr. Tom Zimmer, Wyoming Catholic College’s Assistant Professor of Leadership and Outdoor Education and head of its outdoor programs, reflected on the accomplishment: “This is incredibly exciting news,” he said. “There are so many to thank for the successful completion of this three-year process and we are very proud to be recognized by the Association. AEE is the highest gold standard for outdoor programs (including such flagship organizations as NOLS and Outward Bound), and their approval is a sign of the great work being done by our students and instructors.”

This accreditation is effective for a 3-year term (through June, 2020) and is evidence of our outdoor programs’ compliance with the Association’s standards, including dedication to the Association’s philosophical, educational, ethical, environmental, and cultural tenets; maintaining appropriate risk management plans, licenses, certificates, permits, and insurance; employing qualified staff and conducting on-going in-service education; conducting all activities currently listed in promotional materials appropriately; and working only with those individuals identified as appropriate for the program.

Next week, the students, faculty, staff, and supporters of Wyoming Catholic College will gather in Lander to celebrate the College’s annual milestone: Commencement. On May 13, 2017, the young men and women of the Class of 2017 will cross the stage and be presented with a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree – only the seventh class to do so in the College’s history.

Dr. Glenn Arbery, who will be presiding over his first commencement festivities since being named President in early 2016, is excited by the impending event. “Wyoming Catholic College bears its fruits in its graduates, young people who are firm in moral conviction, imaginative, articulate, compassionate, and touched by divine fire,” he said. “We are proud to send them into the world, because we know that they, in turn, will bear good fruit in whatever they are called to do.”

The public is cordially invited to attend the commencement activities, which will take place over two days: On Friday, May 12, in keeping with a long-standing custom dating back to the Middle Ages, a Baccalaureate Mass will be celebrated at at 4p.m. at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Lander (163 Leedy Drive). The Commencement Ceremony itself will take place the following day, at 10:00 a.m. in The Lander Community and Convention Center (950 Buena Vista Drive). Father Robert Sirico, Founder and President of The Acton Institute, will deliver the commencement address, after which the graduates will be conferred with degrees. The commencement ceremony will end with a commission to graduates from President Arbery, a solemn blessing, and a recessional. A luncheon for all those in attendance will follow.

Details for Commencement Weekend are available HERE, as is an RSVP form. We would appreciate it if those friends and family who a planning to attend could fill out the latter (to help us estimate the size of the weekend’s events).

Today, Wyoming Catholic College is pleased to announce the release of its newly updated website. Available at the same location as in the past—wyomingcatholic.org—it is more mobile-friendly and visually appealing than the old site, as well as a more comprehensive, coherent account of our unique educational vision.

“The website is designed to work on several levels,” says Dr. Glenn Arbery, the College’s president. “You can find information quickly, but you can also delve deeply and take your time. We have new information up almost daily, including faculty podcasts, news releases, lectures, and print publications. There’s much to see here.”

We will be making a few necessary tweaks and adding even more content over the next few weeks, but please take a look around in the meantime and let us know what you think!

This week, regular classes were suspended as the seniors at Wyoming Catholic College present their senior orations to faculty, fellow students, board members, and guests of the College. The classrooms were packed, often overflowing, for these thirty-minute presentations, which were often delivered entirely from memory (though a few notes were permitted). Afterwards, the seniors fielded tough questions for another half an hour.

This year, the orations ranged widely across diverse topics:

Sophie Carter
Silencing the World for Divine Encounter

Inshal Chenet
You Shall Receive Power: On the Legitimacy of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal

Nicholas Curley
“The stuff that dreams are made of: ” Film As a Fine Art That Disposes Man to Catharsis and Contemplation

Carolyn De Salvo
St. Bernard of Clarivaux’s Contribution to the Divine Comedy: The Discovery of Feminine Love Poetry

Alexandra Evangelho
Poverty in Spirit: The Foundation of Generosity

Joseph Fredriksson
I Think Your Clock Is Off: Setting the Clock Back with Traditional Education and the Usus Antiquior at Wyoming Catholic College

Kyle French
Aristotle… Divine Revelation… What is Government Anyway?

Maria Ginetti
Natural Law in the American Founding: A Defense of Traditional Ciceronian and Thomist Thought ss the Basis for the American Constitution

Susan Gleason
The Oak and the Worm: The Twofold Nature of Pride in Undset’s The Master of Hestviken

Hannah Glennon
Hopefully not Hopelessly Romantic: Truth, Beauty, and Order in the Novels of Jane Austen

Ryan Hess
El Que no Está en el Verso: Borges’s Search for Beauty Beyond Being

Maria Klein
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created unequal:” A Study of Equality in American Literature​

Celestine Kreifels
Angelic Monsters: The Power of Horror and Angelism

Veronica Lademan
Behind The Iron Wall: A Critique of the Israeli Narrative

Jonathan Medlin
The Man Who Was Thursday: An Epic Response to Modernity

Chassidy Menard
The Way Down Is the Way Up: Flannery O’Connor and Comic Vision

Zeda Nutter
Charged with the Grandeur of God: Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Baptism of Romanticism

Thomas Raab
The Weight of the Poetic: The Tangible Nature of Love

Daniel Spenst
Educated Conflict: The Necessity of Conflict to Become Educated

Samantha Stancliffe
Silence and Music in the Liturgy: A Quest for Man’s Re-orientation to the Divine

Jacob Stolarski
Achilles and Odysseus: Homer’s Universal Characters

Today, Wyoming Catholic College announced a new weekly podcast series: “The After Dinner Scholar.” Each podcast will feature a fifteen-minute conversation with one of Wyoming Catholic College faculty about the books and ideas that make up the college’s integrated undergraduate curriculum.

The first podcast, a conversation with Academic Dean Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski, introduces the series by asking the question “What are ‘The Great Books’?” In the coming weeks, Dr. Scott Ollsen will discuss “Euclid and the Beauty of Numbers.” Dr. Jason Baxter will talk about “Evil Enchantment and The Weight of Glory: What Dante Taught C.S. Lewis about Poetry.”  And Dr. Michael Bolin will introduce listeners to the pre-Socratic philosophers of Ancient Greece.

“Our faculty have jumped at this opportunity to share the ideas and books they love and teach with a broader audience,” said Wyoming Catholic College president Dr. Glenn Arbery. “I’m scheduled to discuss John Milton’s Paradise Lost and I can’t wait to open up that poem for our friends and supporters.”

“The After Dinner Scholar podcasts,” Dr. Arbery went on to say, “reflect Wyoming Catholic College’s mission as a Catholic liberal arts college. Not only will these podcasts introduce the great ideas and Great Books to a wider audience, they will also suggest practical ways in which listeners can engage those ideas and books thus entering into the great conversation that is Western Civilization.”

Future topics include Shakespearean plays and sonnets, works of Aristotle and Plato, the mathematics of Isaac Newton, the Church Fathers, Augustine, and Aquinas, the American founding documents, and various papal encyclicals. The podcasts may be accessed through the College’s website.