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Marquand Memorial Hall is part of the former Northfield campus of Northfield Mount Hermon, California-based Thomas Aquinas College hopes to open an East Coast branch on the property.
(Republican file)
NORTHFIELD - The private California college that hopes to open a branch here on the former campus of Northfield Mount Hermon has named five staff from the Santa Paula-based school who will be involved with its initial East Coast operation.
Four of the five from Thomas Aquinas College, founded by Catholic lay people in 1971 and devoted to Catholic values and practices, have ties to the commonwealth.
Thomas Kaiser, a veteran college faculty member as well as member of its first graduating class, will serve as associate dean. Michael Augros and Phillip Wodzinski, both of whom have master's and doctoral degrees from Boston College, and Patrick Gardner, who studied at Harvard as an undergraduate, will serve as tutors for the curriculum that is focused on the teaching of analytical, rhetorical and critical thinking skills through the study of theology, philosophy and mathematics
Patrick Cross, one of the college's admission representatives who grew up in Leominster, plans to come East at the end of this academic year in anticipation of the branch opening in the fall of 2018.
In announcing the five, college President Michael F. McLean said, "All have demonstrated an admirable willingness to take on the challenge of opening and managing a new campus in New England, and I am very confident that with a team of this quality we will be successful."
In February, the college and the National Christian Foundation announced that they had entered into a preliminary agreement, under which the foundation will gift the college the former Northfield campus of the preparatory school whose sole campus is now in Gill.
The college, assisted by the foundation in the establishment of a $5 million matching grant fund for the undertaking, plans to assume ownership of the campus in early May, pending site review and permit requirements, and, contingent upon the approval of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, to open to students for the 2018 academic year.
The college has said 36 freshmen will be accepted in each of the first four years, allowing the study body to slowly increase to between 350 to 400 students.
Steve Green, president of the arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby, bought the Northfield property in 2009, intending to transfer it to a Christian educational institution with the financial means to accept and maintain it. The foundation has overseen the property since 2012, and made several attempts to find an institution able to do this and adopt to its community setting.
The gifting to Thomas Aquinas seems to be on tract to accomplish this undertaking.
The Moody Center, a nonprofit that will promote the ideals Dwight Moody, the 19th-century evangelist and founder of Northfield Mount Hermon, will reportedly have 10 buildings on the 217-acre property.