The Idea of the College
The founders of the College loved ideas, books, and teaching, and believed that the great tradition of humane letters is a gift to be studied, cherished, and handed on from generation to generation.  They believed that the highest truths, revealed by God, were the matrix of good learning, stabilizing and enriching the essential study of poetry, philosophy, the classical languages, history and mathematics.  The study of these natural disciplines with the study of theology forms a Christian classicism that has been the intellectual heart of our civilization for seventeen centuries, and because these studies are the very form of the knowing intellect and hence of the person, they have a perennial significance.

From the beginning, teaching and learning in the College have been informed by the interaction of the College List of Texts and teaching and learning in the disciplines, each discipline being presented through courses in which lectures, conversation, and student presentations play a part.

In the beginning, when the College was founded as the Saint Thomas More Institute in 1981, its teaching and learning activities were carried on in living rooms and hospital corridors.  Our campus in the Merida-Bowie-Lubbock Streets block of Fort Worth was acquired beginning in 1985.  The body of Fellows grew from the original founders to, typically, eight or nine; the students sharing in studies grew from eight to fifty-five, but the idea and the work of the College has remained unchanged:  the teaching of the liberal arts in a way that makes the lives of the Fellows and students an adventure in the best of learning, that lifts up the heart to truth, and makes possible a genuinely good life in this time and place that God has given.

The Mission of the College
The College of Saint Thomas More is an academic fellowship, faithful to the teaching and intellectual tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, sponsored and supported by its Board of Visitors, whose members  represent learning in the Liberal Arts through their teaching and writing;  invite into their company appropriately prepared students, both baccalaureate and occasional; who wish to share in this kind of learning; and guide them in attaining the educational objectives of the liberal arts curriculum through mastery and interpretation of the texts and ideas it represents.  In addition to the formal learning proposed by its four-year curriculum, the College serves the metropolitan community by offering informal  opportunities for learning in the liberal arts.

Through its unified, four-year curriculum the College affords students the opportunity to use the tradition of Western thought to build for themselves morally and intellectually significant lives and careers in a world in which the unvarying themes of human nature and experience engage an ever-changing technical and cultural context; gives students who complete the curriculum satisfactorily the scholarly competence that will enable them to pursue those professional or graduate studies for which the curriculum is appropriate undergraduate preparation; and seeks to encourage habits and provide opportunities that will make learning a lifetime vocation for its alumni.

In support of these purposes the College seeks and admits into its community students who share the goals of liberal learning, provides an opportunity for alumni and benefactors to share its work through their generosity, and maintains a Chapel, a library, an appropriate campus, and appropriate support services.

Research and evaluation that will gauge the success of the College and enable it to achieve its purpose more effectively year by year  through carefully considered improvements are integral to the mission of the college

The College of St. Thomas More is one of only 21 Catholic colleges and universities recommended in The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College. The Guide, published by The Cardinal Newman Society in November 2007, recognizes those institutions which are most faithful to their Catholic identity. The colleges are grouped into three categories, and The College of St. Thomas More is identified in the first tier of eight "Joyfully Catholic" institutions; these are schools whose embrace of Ex corde Ecclesiae and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church informs every aspect of campus life.

The CSTM Quality Enhancement Project (QEP)
As part of the effort to improve teaching and learning at CSTM, the entire college will be involved in a five-year-long project that focuses on a single area in college life. With the participation of students, membes of the Board of Visitors, and staff, the Tutors have developed as our QEP “Communicating the Values of Civility and Responsibilty to Improve the Learning Culture of the Classroom.” A pilot project to help refine the project and the means of achieving and measuring the effectiveness of the QEP.

Our Patron Saint
Every academic community has its hero, and to know whom any community admires is to know something of its character.  As the name of the College proclaims, the pattern for the Academic Fellowship of the College is Thomas More of Chelsea, a lawyer who quietly became a saint because of an idea, an idea the defense of which his friends, even his family, considered improvidently stubborn, and because of a loyalty to God, which was held to be at best ill-advised and finally treasonous.  A saint at the end, he was also a man of learning and laughter who loved books and in whose prose the English that Shakespeare perfected was born.  He gracefully stood for truth and quietly, as quietly as one who had been chancellor could, gave his life for it.

The College Prayer
God our Father, in whose reign lie the peace and fulfillment of the creation, we beg you to accept and bless our labors, to give the College prosperity and its members perseverance, virtue, love of learning, and joy.

We ask your blessing upon all who strive to make this College a place of witness to your love and to the nobility of your truth.

We remember before you our benefactors, especially the founders.  May we generously spend ourselves in your service; and may our gifts and labors bear fruit in a perpetual witness to your glory and the splendor of your truth.

Which things we ask, beseeching the intercession of Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, in the Name of Jesus Christ, the King of Creation.

Amen.

COLLEGIUM CHRISTI REGIS RENOVELLARI VERITATE

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