Meet Our Alumni Pages

“What, exactly, can one do with a classical education?”

It is a question that graduates of Thomas Aquinas College know well, one that is invariably asked whenever they mention that they have devoted four years to studying the greatest works of Western civilization. Yet when one considers the College’s alumni and their contributions to Church and society, it becomes evident that a better question would be: “What can the classically educated student not do?”

Below is a partial list of the many graduate and professional schools to which Thomas Aquinas College graduates have been admitted:

When he was 17, Pete Colarelli was skeptical of his parents’ wishes that he attend Thomas Aquinas College. He wanted to pursue a career in politics and thought staying close to his native Illinois — or maybe even going to school in the Washington, D.C., area — would be the best way to achieve that goal. But mindful of his parents’ wisdom, he heeded their advice and chose the College.

“I don’t regret it,” he says now as the first ward alderman for the city of Lockport, Ill. “As a matter of fact, I would have kicked myself today if I did not attend that school.”

Upon launching his dental practice in 2005, Thomas Hart, D.D.S. (’91), was eager to see his business grow and his patient list expand. Yet he never expected that just two years later he would open a satellite office — in a Carmelite convent.

The owner of Wahoo Family Dentistry in Wahoo, Neb., Dr. Hart travels some 45 miles once each month to the Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Valparaiso. In a fully operational, on-site dental office, he provides care to some 28 discalced nuns in the privacy of their cloister.

Sixty miles outside of Tulsa, near the small city of Hulbert, Okla., stands a Benedictine abbey where monks in black habits can be found chanting the Liturgy of the Hours, day and night, in Latin.

“When you’re a Dominican, you could be a college president one day and in charge of the kitchen the next.” Good daughter of St. Dominic, Sr. Thomas Aquinas Halbmaier, O.P. (formerly Laura, class of ’84 , knows well the charism and spirituality of her order. “We’re all the same before God; nothing we do in the lives of our apostolates affects how we live in our home.”

What path would a one-time garage-band bass guitarist take to be? For Rev.

Upon graduating from the College, Maggie Isaacson (’86) — now Sr. Marcella, M.C. — went on to join the Missionaries of Charity, founded by St. Teresa of Calcutta.

A crucifix. The American flag. A framed picture of the Holy Father. One expects to find all these in the principal’s office at a Catholic school. But in the headmaster’s office at St.