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 Not Thinking Small
A highly successful businessman, turning his attention to the liberal arts,
plans to establish America’s best Catholic University.

By Jay McNally

Even though Ave Maria College in Michigan will hold its first commencement ceremonies this year, the four-year-old school is already regarded as one of the most noteworthy Catholic liberal-arts institutions in the US.

Ave Maria is firmly dedicated to the principles enunciated in Pope John Paul II’s landmark statement on Catholic colleges and universities, Ex Corde Ecclessia. To demonstrate the school’s unwavering commitment to authentic Catholic teaching, the faculty and administration took the Oath of Fidelity before Lansing Bishop Carl Mengeling during the liturgy which marked the formal dedication of the college.

Ave Maria was the brainchild of Thomas S. Monaghan, best known as the founder of Domino’s Pizza, Inc., and former owner of the Detroit Tigers. Monaghan sold his pizza empire in 1997 for an estimated $1 billion, and has since dedicated his life to—as he explains it simply —”helping more souls get to heaven.” He is chairman of the Ave Maria Foundation, which sponsors a comprehensive educational effort that includes (in addition to Ave Maria College) two Montessori pre-schools, five elementary Catholic schools, and Ave Maria School of Law.

And these educational entities are only part of a growing empire that seeks to expand Catholicism just about everywhere. There are also: Legatus, an international organization of Catholic executives; Ave Maria University Communications, a book-publishing venture with 22 titles; Credo, a five- year-old Catholic newspaper; two Catholic radio stations, WDEO and WMAX, both based in Michigan; Thomas More Law Center, the Catholic alternative to the ACLU; Ave Maria Missions, which provides sponsorships for poor children in Honduras; Ave Maria House, housing for female students on the University of Michigan campus; and Ave Maria Single Catholic Online, an Internet dating service for committed Catholics.

Not largest, but best
Anyone who listens to Monaghan talk about his efforts to expand the reach of the Catholic Church and to fight back the “culture of death” quickly discovers that the 65-year-old did not earn his fortune by thinking small. Monaghan speaks openly of his goal of turning Ave Maria College into “not necessarily the largest, but the best Catholic College in the world,” with an immediate short-term goal of about 1,000 students.

He has attracted some of the best administrative and teaching talent available for Ave Maria, including Ron Muller, who laid the groundwork for the new school as its founding provost; and the current president, Nicholas Healy, who was vice president for university relations at Franciscan University of Steubenville before coming to Ave Maria two years ago.

Healy has strong entrepreneurial skills—resembling Monaghan in that respect. He does not have an academic background, but became independently wealthy as a New York lawyer in the international shipping and maritime insurance business. He retired from commerce more than a dozen years ago to dedicate himself to promoting Catholic education, and spent nearly a decade at Franciscan University before being wooed by Monaghan.

Under Healy’s watch, Ave Maria has attracted some top talent, including several professors and administrators from Steubenville. Ave Maria College has a full-time staff of 13 professors. There are also a few well-known academics serving as part-time instructors, such as Janet Smith, the philosophy professor who is in great demand on the lecture circuit for her insights on Humanae Vitae and Church teaching on sexuality. (Smith also teaches philosophy part-time at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.)

And in the entrepreneurial spirit—acting just in time for the release of the blockbuster first film installment of The Lord of the Rings—Ave Maria signed on, as “writer-in-residence,” the Tolkien expert Joseph Pearce. Pearce, who hails from England, is perhaps the world’s leading expert on J.R.R. Tolkien, having written two books and numerous articles about the English author.

Cardinal Newman’s model
Ave Maria is a liberal arts school formed after the model of Cardinal John Henry Newman, whose book, The Idea of a University, offered a blueprint for what Catholic higher education should be. Ave Maria offers degrees in philosophy, theology, classics, humanities, literature, economics, political science, and mathematics.

The classes, explains academic dean Michael Dauphinais, are closely coordinated and sequenced so that students receive an understanding of how the truth forms a coherent whole. History professor Dominic Aquila observes:

Faculty and students are talking about the same classes and issues. This atmosphere creates a critical mass, so that meaningful discussion can take place.

“Since nearly all the students live on campus,” Aquila adds, “they are getting all this in a Catholic context, and being formed spiritually, doctrinally, by the time they graduate.”

This intellectual and personal formation, in the great tradition of liberal-arts education, is designed to give students a general background and an ability to think clearly. Graduates of Ave Maria, Aquila predicts, will be “well prepared to go into most entry-level jobs, thoroughly prepared to enter life. They know the terms of the debate and have inner resources to succeed.” Additionally, he says, “they are well equipped for further studies in law, medicine, business, and architecture. This is the unity of truth that Newman was celebrating.”

Ave Maria also offers two special programs, modeled after similar initiatives that have proved quite successful at Franciscan University. One is the pre-theologate program for men thinking about the possibility of becoming priests. It is headed by Father David Testa, who ran a similar program at Steubenville. In the program, students live in community and have the opportunity of exploring religious life, without the burden of a commitment that could curtail their academic options.

The other special offering is the Austrian Program, through which students are able to spend a semester of study abroad in Gaming, Austria. The program is based in a medieval monastery, but students have the opportunity to travel throughout Europe.

And there are several new programs that will be unveiled soon, Dauphinais promises. “Between now and the fall we plan to begin offerings in the drama program, begin an economics major, and add programs in the natural sciences,” he reports. “One of my goals is to realize the vision of becoming a broader university by developing a broad range of programs. Eventually we expect to have programs in pre-med and pre-law,” Dauphinais says.

A permanent site?
The campus is located in an historic section of Ypsilanti: a rugged, mostly industrial town which is also home to Eastern Michigan University, a school of more then 15,000 students. Ypsilanti is also the town where Monaghan’s first pizza shop was located. The location is something of an academic enclave; in addition to Eastern Michigan University —which is literally across the street—Ave Maria College is just about eight miles from the campus of the University of Michigan, in the adjacent city of Ann Arbor.

Ave Maria’s classrooms are in a refurbished former public school, and student housing is a series of modern apartment blocks, mostly located on the same block as the classroom building. Through a cooperative arrangement with Eastern Michigan University (EMU), Ave Maria students are able to take some science classes at EMU, and dinner is available five days a week at one of EMU’s student cafeterias about a block away.

Ave Maria’s enrollment today is 180. Next year’s number is projected at about 270. Monaghan and his advisors are hard at work deciding what to do when the enrollment tops the capacity of the current campus, which is 400 students. That moment could come very soon. Options discussed thus far have included moving the campus to new quarters, either at the sprawling Domino’s Farms complex about seven miles away, or finding another—as yet unidentified—site.

Parents’ preferences
Parents of students at Ave Maria frequently say they are most attracted to Ave Maria’s strong Catholic identity. Steve DiCarlo, whose daughter Chantelle is an Ave Maria freshman, recalls his formal introduction to the small college:

We went up in February of last year and we spent about a day and a half at Ave Maria. We attended some classes, went to Mass, and talked with faculty and administration. The image that stands in my mind is the classes we sat in on. I thought, “Boy, if only we had something like this when I went to college!’”

DiCarlo has seven children in line behind 18-year-old Chantelle, his eldest. Thus, news of a full academic scholarship for Chantelle helped to tip the balance in Ave Maria’s favor when the DiCarlo family made their final decision.

Therese Bower, mother of freshman Paul Bower, says she likes Ave Maria in part because she knows some of the professors through the Couple to Couple League, for which her husband Keith works. “We wanted Paul to attend a truly faithful Catholic college where there are good people teaching, such as Janet Smith,” she said. “Since Paul is very interested in philosophy, I’m thinking, ‘Who better to study under than Janet Smith?’”

While the experience of sophomore Jenny Hayden is probably not typical for Ave Maria students, she articulates the underlying philosophy of Ave Maria College. Jenny is the daughter of Mark Hayden, who for many years was executive director of the Couple to Couple League; she grew up with a strong philosophical appreciation for Church teaching. She explains that she was not particularly interested in pursuing a college degree for purposes of employment, since she already is more than adequately skilled to make a living sewing and designing clothes. But she had other reasons for her interest in Ave Maria:

I’ve always had a love of philosophy. I grew up being fed philosophy— particularly Pope John Paul II’s philosophy of the body—since I was old enough to talk. I heard about Ave Maria, but when I saw that they taught personalism, I became very interested. I knew that I was going to be married some day, and I’ve been growing towards that . . . This—studying at Ave Maria—is a chance to get a solid grounding to study the rest of my life.

One thing that struck me about Ave Maria: It is very simple for me to be myself here, and to be Catholic.

It is a very welcoming atmosphere. There are so many different experiences. A lot of the student body is international, from Latvia, Lithuania, Africa, Slovenia, and Poland. My philosophy teacher is Dutch, my Latin teacher was from the Czech Republic, and there are some from Russia. It is very diverse and we all have different traditions. But we all share the same faith. It brings to mind the apostolic faith.

Jenny Hayden points out that about one-third of the students at Ave Maria are home schooled. The student body is diverse in some respects; the range of ages spans from 18 to 29. But in other respects the students are very much alike. “If they were not practicing their faith before they got there, they were by the time the year ended,” she says.

Social life
For purposes of the undergraduates’ social life, Jenny Hayden says that it is helpful to be situated so close to Ann Arbor, widely regarded as a cultural mecca—particularly for young people. On weekends she said she and her friends periodically attend the Flint Symphony (about an hour’s drive) or the Ann Arbor Symphony. But in terms of popularity those musical experiences rank behind the multitude of folk music concerts available.

And she discovered (as have all other local orthodox Catholics who enjoy Chestertonian conviviality) Conor O’Neil’s, Ann Arbor’s busy Irish pub. Jenny, who plays the Irish harp, said she and her friends periodically go to the pub for the Saturday night open jam session. Then there is the evening dancing at the Ave Maria gym, which is open every day till midnight. “Sometimes, usually at 11 pm when we are done with studies, we go to the gym and dance for a while. Quite a few people do that.”

Tom Monaghan’s immediate goal for Ave Maria College is to have 1,000 undergraduate students, some of them in the pre-theologate program—which he expects to some day be one of the most significant training grounds for priests in the United States.

And as he joked at his Domino’s Farms headquarters during one of his recent monthly meetings with about 150 of his staff, he can see still further into the future of the young school—to a point “not necessarily in my lifetime” when Ave Maria fields “a football team that will play Notre Dame—and cream ‘em!”

Jay McNally is the editor of Credo, a newspaper founded under the auspices of the Ave Maria Foundation. The web site for Ave Maria College is: www.avemaria.edu

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