Current Students

The College’s new Stations of the Cross run alongside a narrow, paved road that predates the College itself — the drive that once brought visitors to the Doheny family hacienda, now the official residence of the College’s president. “The lush area around the drive had gone pretty much unused for as long we’ve been here,” says Dave Gaston, the campus landscape designer. “It was basically a jungle. We had to clear and clean it up, but it’s gorgeous now.”

The decision announced today in the Hobby Lobby case, while providing immediate relief to Hobby Lobby and the other plaintiffs, contains language which leaves the implications of this decision for Thomas Aquinas College unclear.

At a dinner marking the end of the 2014 Summer Tutor Program, the Thomas Aquinas College faculty said goodbye Wednesday night to Head Chaplain Rev. Joseph Illo, who will be departing in July. Tutors, senior administrators, and their spouses met in the campus coffee shop for the celebratory occasion, marking not only the start of summer break for the teaching faculty, but also a last chance for many tutors to bid farewell to this good priest who has served the College faithfully for the last two years.

Twice in the last two weeks members of the Thomas Aquinas College faculty — tutors and senior administrators alike — have participated in seminars about a topic of utmost importance to their work: the mission of the College.

Photographs of the Class of 2014 and this year’s Commencement exercises are now available, for viewing and for purchase, at the Thomas Aquinas College Gallery Page of Timothy Teague, an Ojai-based photographer who has been capturing key College events for some 20 years. The images include portraits of this year’s graduates, both individually and as a group, as well as images from the May 17 Commencement exercises.

Note: At Commencement 2014 President Michael F. McLean continued a longstanding Thomas Aquinas College tradition by concluding the ceremony with the following “Charge to the Graduates.” Founding President Ronald P. McArthur wrote the Charge for use at the College’s first Commencement in 1975, and he and his successors have repeated it, the original text unaltered, at every Commencement since.

Conference: “Philosophy as Handmaiden to Sacred Theology”
June 19-20

This summer a number of faculty members, graduates, and fellow scholars from across North America will participate in the annual West Coast meeting of the Society for Aristotelian-Thomistic Studies. An international organization founded in 1974 “for the purpose of promoting friendship in the pursuit of wisdom,” the Society examines current issues of scientific or philosophic significance.

On the eve of Commencement 2014, Thomas Aquinas College President Michael F. McLean hosted a reception for members of the Senior Class and their parents at the Doheny Hacienda. Photos from the event are available via the slideshow below.

In a longstanding College tradition, the Seniors and members of the faculty followed up Wednesday’s President’s Dinner with a late-night bowling party: