The late-July air is filled with excitement here in Lander, as the Wyoming Catholic College community prepares to welcome the Class of 2030 to town for the first time. But there’s another first-time addition we’re welcoming into the Wyoming Catholic family: an updated website!

Designed and executed by Mission by Design (MxD), a marketing and design firm committed to “helping Catholic, classical, and independent schools recruit more families through exceptional marketing” because they recognize these schools as “uniquely positioned to offer something the world urgently needs.”

The firm is hard at work reviewing and reworking much of the College’s marketing collateral, but the primary focus of its attention in the early days of the partnership has been the redesign of the initial point of contact for many who are hearing about Wyoming Catholic College for the first time: our website, which can be found at www.wyomingcatholic.edu.

Pop on over, take a look around, and let us know what you think!

In addition to the new site, the creative team at MxD has been hard at work on a new promotional video for the College—one that helps capture the uniqueness of the College’s mission and vision, as well as the extraordinary community flourishing here in Lander. Dan Rogers, MxD’s Partner & CEO, wrote about the challenge and the opportunity his team experienced when they arrived in town:

Getting to Lander, Wyoming isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. And we know that when young people put down their phones, step out of their comfort zones, and breathe in the mountain air, everything changes and they begin to actually consider an invitation to attend Wyoming Catholic College.

We made this video to give a very specific type of student (those who have heard of the school, expressed interest, and haven’t visited) a taste of what life is like on campus. Yes, six minutes is long (this isn’t top of the funnel!), but we feel the investment in time required to watch it is proportionate to how different the school is… and we want prospective students and families to sit down, take a moment, and enter into the experience… and then come visit!

Please give it a watch, share it with friends and family, and be sure to pass it along to any young, college-age men and women you know who would benefit from such an extraordinary adventure!

Thanks to the work of Wyoming Catholic College’s good friends at Adeodatus and The Catholic University of America Press, the legendary (but rare) Truth on Trial is finally back in print!

Written by Dr. Robert Carlson, the founding dean of Wyoming Catholic and the author of its Philosophical Vision Statement who was himself an attendee the IHP, the original version of Truth on Trial was published by Crisis Books (an imprint of Crisis Magazine) in 1995, but has long been out of print. In addition to Alice von Hildebrand’s original forward, this new edition features a new forward by Bishop James Conley (head of the Diocese of Lincoln, an alumni and convert of the IHP, and a member of WCC’s Board of Directors) a preface from Fr. Dcn. Kyle Washut (the College’s current president), an account of the founding of WCC and of how the IHP’s vision and alumni influenced that founding, and the aforementioned Philosophical Vision Statement.

From the CUA Press website:

In this reprinting of Truth on Trial, Robert Carlson outlines the sad state of higher education in America, where “learning” is increasingly disconnected from the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty that has always been its most important heritage, replaced by an environment where any view that is not ‘politically correct’ is persecuted and disdained. Drawing upon his own experiences in the transformational Integrated Humanities Program (IHP) at the University of Kansas (KU), Carlson details the crisis that faces education today, and uses the lessons learned through that program’s meteoric rise (and eventual demise) to propose a solution to that same crisis.

Launching in the early 1970’s, the IHP was the “Great Books” brainchild of a trio of KU professors—Dennis Quinn, Franklyn Nelick, and John Senior—who understood that wonder is not only the beginning but also the sustaining principle of the best education, and who sought to offset the radical disintegration permeating Western culture in general and higher education in particular. Convinced that the fragmentation of such major cultural institutions as the family, the church, and the world of education was profoundly affecting students, these three teachers invited freshmen and sophomores at the public university to join their fledgling program, where they would study, hear, and discuss the classics of ancient and medieval literature, listen to their professors converse on “the greatest that has been thought and said,” memorize poems, stargaze, take courses in Latin and rhetoric, and much more.

The program’s growth was immediate and rapid—student enrollment increased from 20 in 1970 to 140 in 1971, and 186 in 1972—but its counter-cultural stance put it on fragile ground at KU, and within a year, it was under intense scrutiny, culminating in a public, quasi-judicial proceeding in which a dean-appointed committee sought to determine whether the IHP should continue to exist. Quinn, Nelick, and Senior, professors with a combined total of 90+ years in teaching, were now on trial at the university, not because they had taught poorly, but because they had taught too well. On January 20, 1979, the Advisory Committee charged with investigating the Program rendered its verdict, placing it under the administration of a new Humanities Committee, effectively annihilating the IHP.

While its initial trial felt like a defeat, God had other plans in store. Thankfully (and to paraphrase Twain’s famous words), the effects of the IHP’s death were greatly exaggerated. In the years since its untimely demise on the KU campus, its impact on the world of Catholic education has only grown stronger—the fruitfulness of its alumni and friends serving as the ultimate proof of its vision’s great worth. Since the program’s closing in 1979, it has inspired the founding of both Clear Creek Abbey and Wyoming Catholic College, as well as St. Gregory’s Academy in Pennsylvania (which eventually led to Gregory the Great Academy), and St. Martin’s Academy in Kansas. Perhaps most tellingly of all, its clear call to make wonder, beauty, and experience vital parts of any educational program has impacted countless homeschooling families, private and public school teachers, and educational programs in the subsequent years.

Thanks to Dr. Carlson’s generosity, proceeds from the sale of this edition go directly to Wyoming Catholic College. It is available at a wide range of booksellers, including (fittingly) the gift shop at Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, an institution as equally and profoundly influenced by the IHP.