ARTICLES

A School is Born

New Catholic University Founded in North County

BY JAMES MCCOY

A group of North Country Catholic businessmen, led by Dr. Derry Connolly, have banded together to launch what they're calling New Catholic University. The school, which so far consists of a website and plan, is new not just in name but also in vision. "New Catholic University," the website states, "will be a visionary teaching institution focused on and dedicated to molding students into future innovators, leaders and entrepreneurs, with a deep and personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, and infused with fundamental Catholic ethical, moral, and social values."

According to the website, the school will combine four years of faith-based classes with majors in business, media, and technology. Accordingly, professors will all be faithful, practicing Catholics who are successful entrepreneurs in one of those three fields. Connolly said recently that he has just about all the faculty he needs for his New Catholic University except a journalist. "That is one place I am running short," he said. "I want an entrepreneur who has started either a magazine or a newspaper or even a web newspaper and who is solidly Catholic and with a passion for teaching."

That combination of passion for enterprise, teaching and the faith is what Connolly hopes to weld together for New Catholic. And as manager of the more than 2,000 teachers in the extension program at University of California -- San Diego, Connolly has had no problem finding such teachers in the fields of engineering and technology. "It is amazing how many of them are good Catholics," he said.

Connolly, who also teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at UCSD, tries to be one himself. He is married and the father of five, one of whom is currently a student at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. Connolly grew up in rural Ireland where, he said, "a lot of people never went past elementary school. But there was a depth of faith in those people that you don't see anymore. Those people rigorously went to Mass every Sunday, they said the rosary every single day, they said litanies of novenas and there was spirituality to them that you would never have at a four-year college. There is a huge rich Catholic tradition of prayer, that is probably not academic, but it is a way of life. When I went to Steubenville, for the first time in America, I saw that sort of innocent spirituality that I saw as a kid. It totally surprised me. I was impressed by the fact that 50 percent of the kids probably go to Mass every single day at Steubenville.

"I teach at UC-San Diego," Connolly continued, "and I have gone to Mass there many times. There might be 10 kids on a weekday out of 20,000: I mean I can't even calculate that percentage because it is so small."

Connolly came from Ireland to Pasadena about 25 years ago to get a doctorate in applied mathematics from California Institute of Technology. As a student he lived with some graduates from Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, where the great books of Western civilization are read in the context of the Catholic intellectual patrimony. Connolly still remembers "discussions ad nauseum on what was an appropriate mathematics curriculum and I could never win the discussion" with the captious TACers.

Soon, Aquinas graduates may be vying for philosophy and theology teaching job offers from Connolly. With four other likeminded local Catholic men and business leaders -- Wes Fach, Scott McKenna, Ed Snow and Philippe Dardaine -- he hopes to get New Catholic University installed in north San Diego County with official California governmental approval in January 2005. Classes are to start that fall.

San Diego Bishop Robert Brom, through his auxiliary, Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, has already given the university's founding fathers his permission to call it "Catholic." Bishop Cordileone, Connolly recalled, "was very excited that we were focusing on media.... He was quite interested in the fact that we are trying to produce solid Catholic journalists."

The following is an interview done with Connolly in late April.

McCoy: What's your vision for New Catholic University?

Connolly: I teach innovation and entrepreneurship. And it fascinates me when I teach college kids, a lot of them are very anxious to discover: How on earth do you set up a business? And if there is one thing that the Catholic Church needs right now it is very strong leadership in the laity. I would love to produce people who were leaders in industry, people who influence society and who have a grounding like a Thomas Aquinas or a Steubenville graduate.

McCoy: How will New Catholic University give students that grounding?

Connolly: I think there is a very strong peer pressure at both TAC and at Steubenville. It is all culture, and it is all influence.... So it is creating a culture around good things, which are Catholic. It is creating a culture on Mass; it is creating a culture on Eucharistic adoration; it is creating a culture around the Rosary.

McCoy: That's spiritual; what about intellectual grounding?

Connolly: I am building a school that is training engineers; I am not training people like a Thomas Aquinas would, for the intellectual life and the arts. Engineers have a totally different expectation; and engineers do make up a body of Catholics that are pretty important.... I just think there is not enough time in four years to give them all of the technology that they need to learn and all of the business that they need to learn -- and all of the philosophy. So I want to give them as much as possible, but I can't give them as much as a TAC could give them.

McCoy: But you'll give them some of it?

Connolly: Yes, our senior year at New Catholic will be studying these great writers of the Church: we will cover Aquinas and we will cover Augustine and we will cover John Paul II. But we probably won't go into the level of detail that you could go into in a TAC program.

McCoy: You spoke about Steubenville. Will the liturgies at New Catholic be like they are at Steubenville?

Connolly: There are two dimensions at Steubenville: there is the charismatic; and there is the traditional. I am sure I can't see this being charismatic. And to me, the Mass is extremely well-spelled out by the magisterium; we don't need to redefine the Mass. Whatever is dictated by the magisterium is what we are going to do, with no deviations from what they stipulate.

McCoy: What does a "solidly Catholic" teacher mean?

Connolly: Somebody who in their private life practices what is laid down by the Church. I don't want somebody who is active in Planned Parenthood, or somebody who is standing on a podium proposing gay rights. I don't want anybody who publicly takes a position against the Church. There are plenty of good-living Catholics out there. It is all in how you select them. The strategy for New Catholic University is that we are going to recruit people first and foremost on their catholicity and secondly on their academic credentials, which is not the norm in academia. And one of the fundamentals in this college is that there is no academic tenure, ever.

McCoy. How will you attract, and keep, teachers?

Connolly: Most of our faculty are going to be people who spent their life in industry, so there is not going to be any academic tenure. So if somebody steps out of line, just like a company, we can fire them. Actually I imagine that our faculty, when they come across a good business idea with students, they more than likely will leave with the students to form companies, so we would have a revolving faculty. Academic tenure is the thing that has done the most harm to Catholic institutions in this country and it is the thing that prevents a lot of institutions from turning themselves around.

McCoy: How will you raise funds, buy land, build?

Connolly: Actually we just got a guy who has come on board this week to head up our fundraising. The other slight roadblock is that we have processed the paperwork for a non-profit status and we expect that to be issued within the month, so once that comes through, we will launch our fundraising campaign. Initially we will lease a facility; and there is a facility that will suit us that will be available. But we are a year and a half away from wanting to sign a lease, because there is no revenue for a year and a half.

McCoy: Tuition and room and board ($26,250) is between Steubenville and University of San Diego prices. Why?

Connolly: It was my estimate of what the market would bear for a school and what I would pay. I probably would spend more to send my children to a technology university because their earning capacity would probably be higher when they graduate.

McCoy: Any prospective students yet?

Connolly: Yes, quite a few -- probably 15 to 20; actually, I got two today.

McCoy: Why call it "New Catholic University"?

Connolly: For a very simple reason. We hope that somebody will make a major donation and we will call the school after them, or at least give them naming rights. Four hundred years ago, John Harvard gave a couple of thousand of bucks to Harvard and it was money well spent, his name will go down forever in history.

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