College news
	Events calendar
	College news archives
	Academic calendar

Seventy-seven Students
Graduate from
Thomas Aquinas College

--Class is largest in 32 years of liberal arts school

By John Scheibe
jscheibe@insidevc.com
Ventura County Star

(May 18, 2003)

Ryan Dowhower's journey to Thomas Aquinas College's Class of 2003 began some five years ago when he answered a deep yearning for a more meaningful life.

For Dowhower, who graduated Saturday, that meant converting to Catholicism. It also meant leaving his job at a bank and going back to college as a freshman at the age of 27.

While in college, Dowhower hoped to find some answers to life's deeper questions by studying and meditating on the works of such great thinkers as Aristotle, Descartes, St. Augustine and others.

And Thomas Aquinas College -- a four-year college near Santa Paula devoted to the study of the Great Books -- seemed a perfect choice.

Still, "it was a gamble," said Dowhower. He already had a bachelor's degree in business from The Masters College in Santa Clarita. Returning to college would mean spending four years alongside many students nearly 10 years younger than himself.

But in the end it was a gamble that paid off richly, he said.

"The past four years have been intellectually and spiritually invigorating," Dowhower said by telephone from his college dormitory last week. "It was everything I hoped for."

Compared to other colleges, students at Thomas Aquinas College are expected to adhere to a strict regimen that includes an 11 p.m. weekday curfew. The curfew is extended to 1 a.m. on weekends.

And while most college students spend a lot of time listening to lecturers, those at Thomas Aquinas spend this time listening to each other through what is known as the "Socratic Method."

Named after the Greek philosopher Socrates, Thomas Aquinas students learn through dialogue by discussing the works of everyone from Plato and Shakespeare, to Euclid, Adam Smith and Sir Isaac Newton.

"The Catholic faith teaches that man can come to know the existence of God through the use of reason," Dowhower said.

A total of 77 students graduated from Thomas Aquinas Saturday, making it the largest graduating class in the 32-year history of the liberal arts college.

"You are liberal in the original sense of that word," Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, the commencement's keynote speaker, told graduates. "You are free."

In finding truth during their four-year tenure at Thomas Aquinas, the graduates had also found freedom, Stafford said.

Stafford urged graduates to avoid the widely held perception common in today's technologically minded world that science can answer all things.

"The technological, mechanical mind-set can never answer the mystery of being," he said.

Dowhower will take a teaching job at a Catholic preparatory school in Orange County later this year. Many of his classmates will continue on to graduate or professional schools to pursue degrees in fields as diverse as law, medicine, literature and architecture.