Thomas Aquinas College

Santa Paula

Thomas Aquinas College is unique among American colleges and universities. We hold with confidence that the human mind is capable of knowing the truth about reality, that living according to the truth is necessary for human happiness, and that truth is best comprehended through the harmonious work of faith and reason. We understand the intellectual virtues to be essential to the pursuit of truth and to the life of reason it presupposes, and we consider the cultivation of those virtues to be the primary work of Catholic liberal education.\r\n\r\nThe academic program designed to achieve this goal is comprehensive and unified; it includes no textbooks or lectures. Through all four years of their studies and in every course-from philosophy, theology, math, and science to language, music, literature and history-students actually read the greatest written works in those disciplines, both ancient and modern: Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, the Founding Fathers of the American republic, Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot, to name a few. Instead of attending lectures, students gather around tables for careful inquiry in small tutorials, seminars and laboratories.\r\n\r\nThe curriculum challenges students to a disciplined scholarship in the arts and sciences indispensable for critical judgment and genuine wisdom. One mark of the program’s success is the variety of professions and careers graduates enter. Nearly half attend graduate and professional schools in a wide array of disciplines; among them, philosophy, theology, law, and the sciences are most often chosen.