With a Curriculum Designed by the Program Director, Fr Peter Stravinskas, President of the Catholic Education Foundation

I am delighted to announce that Pontifex University is now accepting students for this new program. Designed by the Director of the program, Fr Peter Stravinskas, who is President of the Catholic Education Foundation, it will enable administrators to permeate the school curriculum with Catholic moral values and teaching and so form the students with a Catholic worldview.

An interview with Fr Stravinskas about the program is published in Catholic World Report. In it he states:

The rationale for this program is simple: The Church in the United States needs Catholic schools today more than ever. The indispensability of the school underlies the conviction of the Church Universal as enunciated in Gravissimum Educationis, various documents of the Congregation for Catholic Education, as well as in the statements of the Popes and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Our schools are highly regarded within the community of the Church and in society-at-large.

All that having been said, however, it is equally clear that in the foreseeable future, our schools will be run predominantly by laity, many of whom have not had a Catholic elementary and/or secondary school education themselves or who have had poor experiences of such; even many of the clergy and religious currently involved in the Catholic school apostolate fit into the same category.

Most courses carry three credits. Thirty credits are needed for the degree, with 28 of those credits comprising required courses; thus, a student will be able to choose from five or six courses for the one elective.

These are the required courses: Organization & Administration of Catholic Education; Philosophical Foundations of Education; Psychological Foundations of Education; Civil & Canonical Issues in Education; Finances for Catholic Schools; Curriculum Development & Evaluation in the Classical Mode; Formation of Catholic School Teachers; History of American Catholic Education; The Way of Beauty: The Catholic Cultural Heritage; Educational Research.

Some electives are Catechetics for the Catechist, The Spiritual Life of the Catholic School, and School Community Relations.

A thesis will also be required.

Those who are interested to know more about the program itself should go to the Pontifex University website, here. Enrollments are online through www.Pontifex.University. You can access the page, here.