CHRIS MERRILL Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Saturday, May 10, 2008 12:00 am
LANDER - The college freshmen throughout the cafeteria were suntanned and vigorous, their faces lively after a morning of horseback riding. They looked one another in the eyes as they chatted and ate their hot lunches, and never once did anyone glance down at a text message, or an MP3 player.
For the entire break, not a single electronic ringtone interrupted the soft murmur of old-fashioned, face-to-face colloquium.
Amid a technological revolution that birthed the Internet, cell phones, laptops, iPods, wireless Web access, first-person shooter games and all manner of virtual lives and lifestyles, one small college here is about to complete its first year of what might be called an audacious experiment: the revival of a classical, "great books"-based education for the mind, body and spirit.
It is a school where the students take Latin immersion classes, read the seminal books of Western civilization, take training in horsemanship and trek through the wilderness to observe nature and learn survival and leadership skills.
In an era when technology is king, Wyoming Catholic College is positing an against-the-grain conviction: that great advances in technological achievement, while widely celebrated, might not in fact be good for people. And they might actually get in the way of education.
Here, students are encouraged, and in many ways required, to forgo the world of virtual connectivity, and engage with the actual world - to go out into the woods, the mountains and the horse stables and experience what college officials refer to as "God's first book."
Student Hannah Gaddis of Casper said the school's curriculum kept her so busy and engaged that she never had time to give the school's strict technology policy a second thought.
"You kind of realize how much you don't need these things," she said.
'Wisdom in God's Country'
Wyoming Catholic College began educating its first freshman class last August in this small town tucked close to eastern slope of the Wind River Mountains. The students will finish their final exams on Thursday.
The school's philosophy defies so much of what has become common practice on colleges and universities in the United States that it flies in the face of almost every recent trend of higher education, including the growing prominence of technology, and the emphasis on job and career preparation.
Here the students are encouraged to learn how to think before worrying about what they might do for a career, said Mario Coccia, the college's director of admissions.
"We're a tiny little college, but if Thomas Jefferson were here, he'd look at our curriculum and say, 'Hey, I did that.' What we offer is a lot like what our founding fathers had," Coccia said. "A lot of education today is really job training, but the general education of students is neglected - teaching how to think, how to communicate, how to problem solve, how to learn, how to be a leader. Somebody who knows how to do these things, and to think on his feet, can excel at anything."
The college opened its doors to students with this motto: "Wisdom in God's Country."
As freshmen, all incoming students participated in a National Outdoor Leadership School program; it was the first thing they did before the start of the academic year.
The students were broken into small groups, each spending three weeks in the wilderness with a NOLS instructor and a priest from the college. The students hiked, camped, fished, climbed rocks, received leadership training and learned wilderness survival skills so they would become equipped, Coccia said, to observe and interact with God's first book more independently as upperclassmen.
All freshmen at WCC also participate in an equestrian program, currently offered through a partnership with Central Wyoming College, in which students learn to ride, and they take a course on horse care and anatomy.
The objective of the equestrian program is to give the students the skills and knowledge necessary to take horses out on their own for trail riding and pack trips in their upper-class years.
WCC has included long weekends in the upcoming academic year so the sophomores will have opportunities to apply their wilderness and horse training.
Students pay $14,500 per year to attend WCC, plus room and board, for a total cost of $21,250 for freshmen and $21,050 each year after that.
About 80 prospective freshmen began the application process for the upcoming school year, and the college has filled the 32 spots available for its incoming class.
No cell phones?
Of the 35 students who started the program last fall, 34 are still here for final exams. The one student who left the program went home for health reasons, and she has told her friends and school administrators that she'd like to return to the college as soon as possible, they said.
Coccia said he expects most, if not all of the students to be back next year as the school's first sophomore class. That's in spite of the strict technology policy that includes bans on TVs and cell phones, and allows no Internet access to students in their residences - and only limited access in an on-campus computer lab.
"To be honest, I liked it," said student Jonathan Rensch, a Vermont native. "Not having a TV around is actually kind of freeing."
Rensch said he felt similarly about the requirements to forgo cell phones and handheld devices, because living on a college campus without them has produced an emphasis on in-person, face-to-face dialogue.
"It allows people to have really solid, meaty, meaningful conversations," Rensch said. "As a student body we're much closer than I've seen in any other community besides my family."
Amanda Walker, a student from southeast Wyoming, agreed.
"I think it's been beneficial," she said. "It gives students more time to concentrate on their studies and on community life."
From the perspective of school administrators, gadgetry can be distracting, intrusive and addictive, Coccia said. After a couple of weeks living with the technology policy, the students tend to feel unshackled, as opposed to restricted by it.
Kate Harrison, a student who came here from Kansas City, said she has only talked to a couple of students who are not completely certain about "where they're supposed to be," but if they chose not to return to WCC, it would be an extremely tough decision for them.
"Everybody I've spoken to is adamant about coming back," Gaddis said.
Tight-knit class
The license plates in the small parking lot between Holy Rosary Catholic Church and the college's interim academic building were from states as far afield as Iowa, New Jersey, California and Illinois.
Although WCC students came to Lander from towns and cities throughout the United States, they have become extraordinarily close to one another, according to those interviewed. They all pointed to the shared experience of the NOLS trip as the foundation for that closeness.
Harrison said the intensity and difficulty of the trip forced the students early on to work out any differences they might have had.
"It was hard, it was challenging, and it was survival," Harrison said. "I think the NOLS experience bonded everybody."
Gaddis, Antonio Padilla of Laramie and Jacob Halsmer of La Grange, Ky., all agreed that the students became close friends, across the board, because along with their Catholic faith they share common traits such as the desire to be challenged physically, spiritually and intellectually.
And they all have been captured by the fundamental assumption of the school's academic philosophy: that there is such a thing as truth and that one can learn to identify and eventually internalize the truth.
"It's learning how to recognize truth in what you read, and learning to recognize non-truth; to recognize the difference between the two," Harrison said.
Halsmer said while the curriculum has been exceptionally difficult, and the expectations very high, his mind, body and spirit have been whipped into shape, and he has come to crave the hard work in all three phases of his life.
"This is the first time in my life I've actually felt like I learned something," Halsmer said.
Jonathan Rensch said with only one year of the great books curriculum under his belt, he has learned to think more clearly, to identify and articulate an argument and to write more elegantly.
"It's funny, but I think constantly exercising my mind has even helped my chess game," Rensch said.
Reporter Chris Merrill can be reached at chris.merrill@trib.com or at (307) 267-6722.