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COMMENCEMENT 2018
College Celebrates 44th Graduating Class
“The Lord has great plans in mind for you,” said the Most Rev. Robert C. Morlino, echoing the Prophet Jeremiah, to the 86 graduates of Thomas Aquinas College at Commencement 2018. “With the tremendous gifts that you have — spiritually, academically — you will soar toward the heavens, where Jesus is seated at the right hand of God.”
The Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, His Excellency served as the honored speaker at the College’s 44th Commencement. He also served as the principal celebrant and homilist at that morning’s Baccalaureate Mass of the Holy Spirit in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel. “When I look around our country — and honestly, when I look around the Church — I am not comforted by what I see,” Bishop Morlino admitted in his homily, while urging graduates to remain hopeful nonetheless. “The Holy Spirit is going to show forth in the Church the greatness of His power,” he added. “You are part of the solution.”
Following the Mass, just outside the Chapel on the academic quadrangle, was the Commencement ceremony itself, during which the Class Speaker, Suzanne Urbancic (’18) also spoke of God’s plans for this year’s graduates. “It is in union with Christ, the Truth Himself, that this education finds its real fruition,” she said. “With that end ever before our minds, and filled with gratitude for the past and hope for the future, let us today begin that path which God has in store for each one of our lives.”
As part of the Commencement ceremony, the College honored Bishop Morlino for his faithful service to the Church, presenting him with the College’s highest honor, the Saint Thomas Aquinas Medallion.
Full Commencement coverage 
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Bishop Morlino and President McLean
Class Speaker Suzanne Urbancic (’18)
Bishop Morlino receives the Saint Thomas Aquinas Medallion |
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TOP 10 CATHOLIC COLLEGES
“Recognized as the Best Across the Board”
College Consensus, a new online aggregator of college-review guides, has ranked Thomas Aquinas No. 10 on its list of the Best Catholic Colleges of 2018, or “the Catholic schools in America recognized as the best across the board.” The College is the only one of the now-numerous new Catholic colleges founded since its own establishment in 1971 to be included on the list.
Designed to be comprehensive, the College Consensus rankings combine those of prominent publishers — such as the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News & World Report — with those of various student-review sites to produce what it calls a “consensus rating.” In addition to placing Thomas Aquinas College among the top of all Catholic institutions, the aggregator lists it as No. 39 nationwide for “student consensus” and No. 56 among all national liberal arts colleges.
Full story
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FAITH IN ACTION
Highlights from the College’s Alumni Blog
• After two years of a vigorous legal battle, an alumni-led legal team has succeeded in overturning California’s assisted-suicide law. In May, Riverside Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia blocked the 2015 legislation, ruling that it was passed unconstitutionally. Katie Short (’80), vice president for legal affairs at the Life Legal Defense Foundation, spearheaded the effort to defeat the law, which went into effect in June 2016. “The Superior Court in Riverside granted Life Legal’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and set aside the California assisted-suicide law based on the way in which it was passed,” says Paul Blewett (’85), the foundation’s president. “This is huge!”
• At its spring commencement ceremonies, the University of Notre Dame honored a member of the Thomas Aquinas College teaching faculty, Dr. Joshua Noble. A 2010 graduate of the College, Dr. Noble earned a master’s degree in early Christian Studies at Notre Dame in 2012 and completed his doctoral degree earlier this year. In May he returned to South Bend to receive both his doctorate and the University’s Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Graduate School Award, which recognizes the top graduate students in engineering, the humanities, social sciences, and science. “A specialist of Christianity and Judaism in antiquity and gifted linguist,” Notre Dame News reported, Dr. Noble “is recognized for his exceptional scholarship.”
• In April, benefactors, friends, and the families of St. Monica Academy in Pasadena, California, hosted a “Gatsby Gala,” at which they honored the school’s longtime choir director, Stephen Grimm (’75). As part of the night’s festivities, the treasurer of the school’s Board of Directors, Khushro Ghandhi, presented Mr. Grimm with the Ostia Award — named for the Italian port town where St. Monica and her son, St. Augustine, shared a vision of heaven — in recognition of the work that Mr. Grimm has done for the school since its founding in 2001. “Stephen is an especially appropriate winner of this award,” reads the tribute that accompanied its presentation, as “he has often brought us to experience, from the mouths of our own children, heavenly beauty.”
Faith in Action blog
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Katie Short (’80) and Stephanie Packer, who suffers from a terminal illness
TAC tutor Dr. Joshua Noble (’10) receives Notre Dame’s Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Graduate School Award
Stephen Grimm (’75)
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THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE ANNUAL REPORT
A Note from President Michael F. McLean
Dear Friends of Thomas Aquinas College,
The financial statements linked below cover our 2016-2017 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2017.
I cannot begin this letter without expressing our deep gratitude for the outpouring of support we have received as a result of the Thomas Fire, the largest wildfire to strike California in recorded history, which was named because of the proximity of its starting point to the College. From the firefighters who battled all night to save our campus, to the many families who sheltered our evacuated students, to the friends near and far who provided financial assistance, to the countless souls who have held us up in prayer, we have been richly blessed. Thank you.
Even before the fire, it was an extraordinary year for the College: On May 2, the National Christian Foundation donated to us a former preparatory-school campus in the town of Northfield, Massachusetts. You can read more about this magnificent gift at our New England Updates page.
Meanwhile, the day-to-day work of the College has continued, sustained by thousands of contributions to our Annual Fund. Euclidian demonstrations and discussions of St. Thomas don’t appear in the news, and the gifts that support them seldom make headlines, but in the end, all of these apparently small things make up the work that matters most.
Continue reading
TAC Annual Report 2016-17 (PDF)
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Dr. McLean
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