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ST. JOHN PAUL II ATHLETIC CENTER
Fritz B. Burns Foundation Awards $15 Million Grant for California Facility
The rumbles of heavy machinery can be heard on the College’s California campus, where construction has begun on a new athletic center, made possible by a $15 million grant from the Fritz B. Burns Foundation of Los Angeles. The facility, which will likely be completed before the start of the 2021–22 academic year, will bear the name of a saint of recent times who was both a friend of the young and a champion of physical fitness: Pope St. John Paul II.
“We are deeply grateful to the Fritz B. Burns Foundation, which has supported the construction of several buildings at the College and now surpasses its past generosity with its largest grant to date,” says President Michael F. McLean. “For generations to come, the students of Thomas Aquinas College, California, will exercise their bodies in the Pope St. John Paul II Athletic Center, as they train their minds in our classrooms and nurture their souls in the Chapel.”
“Our students have long waited to have an athletic center on this campus,” continues Dr. McLean. “By God’s grace and thanks to the Fritz B. Burns Foundation’s wonderful generosity, their patience will soon be rewarded with an excellent facility worthy of its patron’s name.”
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►A Fitting and Fit Patron: Pope St. John Paul II
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Artist's rendering of the John Paul II Athletic Center
Pope St. John Paul II
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EIGHT YEARS LATER
God Continues to Work through Andrew “Kent” Moore (’14)
On July 20, 2012, Thomas Aquinas College learned the tragic news that one of its students, Andrew “Kent” Moore (’14), was struck and killed that very morning by a passing vehicle while participating in the Crossroads Pro-Life Walk Across America. The College continues to keep Andrew in its prayers. And each year, when its California students participate in the Walk for Life West Coast, they do so in his honor and, no doubt, sustained by his intercession.
Beyond aiding the pro-life cause he loved dearly, Andrew’s intercession seems to be bearing fruit in other ways, too. The College recently came to learn of an appearance by Dr. Nadia Mitchell on EWTN’s Journey Home program in 2017. A former Protestant, Dr. Mitchell found her way to the Catholic faith by way of a grace-filled journey that began, however improbably, with Andrew Moore.
“On July 22, 2012, I was reading a blog about a young Catholic man, Andrew Moore, who had been on a pro-life walk across the country with a group called Crossroads,” Dr. Mitchell told host Marcus Grodi. “And, outside Indianapolis two days before, he had been struck by a car as he was praying and killed instantly.” Accompanying that blog post were prayers posted by fellow Catholics, which led Dr. Mitchell to seek answers about Catholic theology — and very soon thereafter brought her to the fullness of the Catholic faith.
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Andrew "Kent" Moore ('14) |
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SENIOR REFLECTIONS
Giving up a Full Scholarship to Attend TAC was Worth It
By Michael Murphy (’20)
Growing up, I always wanted to join the military, and my top choice among the schools I was accepted to during my senior year in high school was the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). I was also accepted to TAC, but I did not imagine I would ever end up here.
My desire to attend VMI grew even more when I received an academic scholarship for full tuition. To obtain this scholarship I had to travel to the VMI campus and be interviewed by a panel of nine officers who were in charge of admissions. The interview lasted about 45 minutes, and we discussed a wide variety of topics. There was one question an officer asked me, however, which left a lasting impression. He asked why I was interested in both TAC and VMI, which were both extremely prestigious schools in their own respective fields of study.
His question marked the first moment that I began to seriously consider attending Thomas Aquinas College. I visited the College a couple of weeks after that interview. While I was on campus, I sat in on some classes, and one particularly captivated me. It was a class led by Dr. Michael Augros, in which the students discussed the chapter of the De Anima in which Aristotle considers the faculty of sight and the medium by which we see. Although I didn’t know the answer to any of the questions, I wanted to talk many times, and I wanted to know the answers to these questions which I had never thought about before. This desire to know, coupled with being on campus and getting to know members of the student body, made it clear to me that I should attend TAC for my college education.
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Michael Murphy ('20) |
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FAITH IN ACTION
Highlights from the College's Alumni Blog
• The Knights of Columbus have published a wonderful story about the work that their members are doing to support vulnerable Native American populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notable among those featured are two members of the College’s Class of 2003: Jeremy Boucher and Patrick Mason, the Knights’ national supreme director. In March, Mr. Mason, Mr. Boucher, and fellow Knights in their Gallup, New Mexico, council began filling a trailer with crates of donated and purchased food, which they distributed to local reservations. Their efforts soon expanded — all the way to native communities in Hawaii — and by early July the Knights had delivered more than $320,000 of relief packages.
• Drawing on her experience of applying Catholic Montessori principles to the raising of nine children, Regina (Aguinaldo ’97) Sweeney is now sharing her wealth of knowledge with parents everywhere by way of her new website, Catholic Montessori Home. The site includes a blog as well as a virtual community for parents, The Hamlet — the fruit of many, many questions about child-rearing that the Sweeneys have received over the years. “With current events causing children to be home full-time with their parents,” Mrs. Sweeney notes, she saw that “it was time for me to share more widely what has worked for us in raising our children.”
• After serving for the last few years as a part-time lecturer at Christendom College, TAC alumna Dr. Kathleen Sullivan (’06) has been named a full-time faculty member in the school’s Department of English and Literature. Dr. Sullivan holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Dallas and a doctorate in literature from the Catholic University of America. During her graduate-school years, she was a regular presence on Thomas Aquinas College’s California campus, where she served several times as the beloved head women’s prefect for the High School Summer Program. Congratulations to Dr. Sullivan on her new job — and to Christendom on an excellent hire!
► Faith in Action blog
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Knights of Columbus
The Sweeney children
Dr. Kathleen Sullivan (’06) |
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RE-OPENING NEW ENGLAND!
College Renovates Campus for Students’ Return
While many schools have decided to cancel or truncate the upcoming academic year, Thomas Aquinas College plans to fully re-open — with in-person instruction — this month! The College gives thanks to God for this tremendous turn of events.
For the last six months, officials on the New England campus have worked diligently to welcome back students in a way that will keep them, the College’s employees, and its neighbors safe. As part of the re-opening plan, the College is renovating the antiquated Tracy Student Center so that it will be a fun, desirable spot for students to gather and socialize without leaving campus. It likewise needs to expand classroom capacity and on-campus exercise options, and add more outdoor seating. With so many students’ families suffering from unemployment and income loss, it will also need to significantly bolster funding for financial aid.
The College has assembled a comprehensive list of the items it requires to meet the goal of opening the campus in time for the new year — everything from board games to seminar tables to kitchen equipment. Would you please take a look at the list, and see if you may be willing to fund any of these items as a gift to the students of Thomas Aquinas College? Your generosity is essential to helping us return to in-person classes and making Catholic liberal education possible on our New England campus once more.
►Help Re-Open TAC, New England!
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