Welcome to the Constantin College of the Liberal Arts, the home of the finest Catholic
undergraduate education in the country! That's a bold claim, I know. But consider:
where else can you study the great works of western, Catholic and American civilization,
and then major in a discipline of your choice with top scholars who love the classroom?
Where else do 99% of Biochemistry majors get admitted to their first-choice medical
school? What other school produces Goldwater and Truman scholars, major figures at
Washington DC think-tanks, and more Fullbright fellowships per capita than the Ivy
League schools? What other school asks you so insistently: what is the nature of
reality, and how should a life be lived - and then demand that you begin to formulate
answers to those questions, answers that will shape you for the rest of your life?
The answer: nowhere else does all of these things and does them with this level of
excellence. Eugene Constantin(1896-1973), one of the founders of UD, wanted not
just another school but a great Catholic university. To him we can say: by their
fruits ye shall know them. University of Dallas students become leading citizens
in their fields, from business to literature, from physics to politics, from medicine
to ministry, because they are so immersed in the great works of our civilization that
they have a broader and deeper puchase upon the questions, problems, and proposed
answers of today. It all begins with the depth and breadth of our renowned Core Curriculum,
where students read, question, and tangle with many of the most significant works
of our civilization - because they are taught by leading scholarly teachers who demand
their best work. But the Core is not some linear march through time - a method that
often produces students who think either that their egos are the the destination of
the march, or that the culture took some wrong turn in the past from which it has
never recovered. No, our Core is recursive, looping back again and again through
time to show that the fundamental human questions persist, and it is our challenge
to engage with them, tangle with them, and make them our own so that we can step forward
and lead our families, our churches, our professions and our culture. The majors
take the fundamental shaping of the Core and lead one to discipline, tofocus, to deepen
one's knowledge by taking up the particular field of one's study. Now one hones one's
intellectual abilities by seeing the particular ways one field looks upon the whole
of picture from a particular point of view, gaining the power and strength of that
focused vision upon the whole. In one's major, we discipline ourselves, learning
how that field asks questions, explores them, understands the data before us, so as
to come to a sharper and deeper understanding. A student disciplines him or herself,
that is, to achieve the goods of discipline. In the midst of this is the Rome semester,
what Constantin students call "the core of the Core," the place where Athens meets
Jerusalem, revealed truth meets philosophic exploration, and for the student, where
the books and poems and plays come alive in the very places where these events happened,
and where one's education is put to the ultimate test: how will you live? Out of this
trifocal character, core and major mutually informing one another, UD students take
their place in the world as leading citizens, able to articulate the questions, find
the solutions, and create anew their communitites, whether in business, medicine,
education, ministry, finance, or any other field. Once in the world, Constantin students
rise to the top of their fields, their towns, their communitities - because they have
been bred for it by this education.
Ultimately, however, the power of this education comes becasue it is Catholic and catholic, because it places all pursuit of knowledge and understanding in the ultimate, universal context: of a creator God who shares His life with us, suffered for and with us, and wants us to know Him as the ultimate truth, the ultimate good, the ultimate beauty. Over 1400 students take this journey every year. It is the adventure of a lifetime to be one of them.
Thank you for your interest in the Constantin College of Liberal Arts. Please learn more about our College here, click here if you are thinking about studying at UD, or here to support our work and our students.
Sincerely,
Gregory Roper, PhD
Dean of Constantin College
Associate Professor of English