After the Mass, the group of roughly 400 students, faculty, governors, and friends of Thomas Aquinas College gathered for the Matriculation Ceremony in the Moody Auditorium. There, as Associate Director of Admissions John Jost, called each student by name, the students came forward, one at a time, to greet President Michael F. McLean and Bishop Scharfenberger. They then signed their names in the campus registry, thus beginning their tenure as students at Thomas Aquinas College, New England.
In addition to the new students, the College acknowledged the three newest members of the New England teaching faculty: new tutor Dr. Taylor O’Neill and two tutors who have come east from the California campus, Dr. Steven Cain and Dr. Peter Cross. The three educators made the Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity, as do all members of the teaching faculty on both campuses.
Dr. McLean then delivered his Matriculation Address. “At Convocation we celebrate our return to the life of the College and we rejoice with our freshmen, and encourage them, as they begin this life,” he said. “As you contemplate the academic road in all its breadth and depth that lies before you, be encouraged by the words of our patron, St. Thomas Aquinas, who teaches that ‘all of human learning is directed to the knowledge of God.’”
At the conclusion of the ceremony, Dr. McLean proclaimed the start of the College’s 51st academic year — and third in New England — to which students responded with loud applause. Members of the faculty and Board of Governors then processed out of the auditorium as all sang “Immaculate Mary” in joyful anticipation of the new year, now at hand.
