The Liberal Arts

A Great Ordinary Means to a Great but Ordinary End

In The Idea of a University Saint John Henry Newman writes that "a University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life.”  At Saint Joseph's we embrace the liberal arts as a way "to combine faith with reason in the pursuit of academic excellence."  

Fundamental to a liberal arts education is the transformation of the student. While stimulating a passion for lifelong learning, it invites students to pursue truth and virtue through dialogue with great thinkers, writers, and artists. Through this personal development, a liberal arts education aspires to impart to students a commitment to engage with and renew culture from the inside out.  With its emphases on critical thinking and writing, the liberal arts also cultivate the skills necessary to succeed in any endeavor.  These competencies will endure through the more than ten job changes that Saint Joseph's graduates can expect in their lifetimes.  The liberal arts also provides opportunities to encounter various academic disciplines resulting in an integrative undergraduate experience.  Finally, within the setting of Saint Joseph's Catholic Mercy identity, students are challenged to explore issues such as social justice, ethics, and spirituality, and the relationships of these issues to students’ academic courses as well as their lives outside of the classroom.

Regardless of their academic majors, all students at Saint Joseph's College encounter the liberal arts through its core curriculum.  The course of instruction includes classes in theology, philosophy, fine arts, history, mathematics, literature, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. 

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