In the 8th episode of Conversatio, Dr. Lee-Ann Kenny sits down with senior nursing students Ellie and Sydney, along with Professor Emily Nishiyama, to discuss how the Benedictine hallmarks influence the daily lives of nurses and their practice. Learn how nurses integrate faith into their care, foster compassionate environments, and pass on these timeless values to future generations of healthcare professionals.
Alumni News
Why We’re Catholic with Trent Horn
In the latest episode of Conversatio, Dr. Tom Varacalli sits down with Catholic apologist Trent Horn to discuss his book Why We’re Catholic. They explore the intersection of faith and politics, how Catholics can engage with secularism, and how to navigate tough conversations about the faith. This episode offers valuable insights for both new and lifelong Catholics on living out and sharing the Catholic faith in today’s world.
The Hero’s Quest: The Power of Story for Man as Homo Viator
In this sixth episode of Conversatio, Fr. Jonathan Torres, a 2013 graduate of the Abbey, explores the Hero’s Quest and the power of story for man as homo viator—the “man on a journey.” He shares insights with our honors college students on how the narrative of Christ, as depicted in the Bible, reveals the transformative power of story to shape human identity and purpose—and how we can understand our own lives as a story in the making.
What can I do with a Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education?
Belmont Abbey College’s Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education (MACLE) provides essential formation for professionals in Classical K-12 education: whether teachers, administrators, curriculum and resource creators, or homeschooling network leaders.
If your calling lies in classical education, this flexible, affordable online degree program with a 10-12 month completion date offers personal and professional development uniquely capable of transforming your vocation.
- As a classical K-12 teacher, you will develop the skills and understanding to inspire students with a shared love of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. By grounding yourself in a pedagogy specifically designed to engage students directly with the riches of the Great Books tradition, you will not only encourage active participation, critical and creative thinking, and thoughtful and genuine communication: you will change students’ lives.
- As a classical K-12 administrator, you will learn how best to support classroom instructors and their students, cultivating an authentic community oriented toward learning. Fruitful classroom seminars are only possible where a safe, ordered, and healthy community is free to grow and to engage with the Good, so classical education requires men and women like you who address the essential needs of an academic institution with wisdom and prudence.
- As a resource or curriculum creator, you will provide classical educators at all grade levels and across communities with renewed access to the timeless riches of the Western canon, facilitating profound encounters with the great conversation in which generations have engaged as they seek the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Curricular support extends this conversation and helps teachers to challenge their students, offer context, and explore further questions, scaffolding the skills by which students will discover ever more fully how to learn and engage.
- As a leader in a homeschool network, you will bring the depths of the Great Books tradition into the first of all schools, the home, by providing the tools and support that parents and fellow educators need to fulfill the mission they have so generously embraced. By taking such direct and active roles in their children’s schooling and their community as a whole, homeschooling educators model the joyful responsibility of lifelong learning in pursuit of wisdom, and offering leadership in such a community entails a profound contribution to the good of our society and culture.
Belmont Abbey designed its Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education in collaboration with the CiRCE Institute, ICLE, and the Veterum Sapientia Institute, all leaders in the classical education movement who are committed to forming men and women like you in the best that liberal arts tradition has to offer. In addition to exploring the Trivium and Quadrivium as foundations of classical education, the MACLE candidate gains critical pedagogical training while engaging questions of faith and reason, poetry and philosophy, civic understanding, and the human condition.
As an educator invested in the mission of classical education, you will have the opportunity to more deeply pursue Truth, Goodness, and Beauty while making the fruits of this journey available to your students and colleagues – ultimately inspiring them in their own journeys and nourishing the active community of seekers that lies at the heart of classical and liberal education.
If you are an educator seeking to grow personally and professionally, consider what an MA in Classical and Liberal Education could mean for your calling. Click here to explore the possibilities.
The Definition of Servant Leadership
“It’s not what you know. It’s who you know.” Usually we think of this as an unarguable dictum of the business world, stressing only the necessity of developing a professional network to advance in a chosen field. But Dr. Brad Frazier relays this to his Belmont Abbey College MBA students on their first day of Christian Ethics & Leadership for the Common Good, the message runs strikingly deeper, resonating with the kind of authentic, servant leadership that is more than a business strategy. It is a calling. It’s who you know.
In the words of Catherine Barber ‘15, Adult Degree Program alumna and pioneering graduate of the Abbey’s MBA, Belmont Abbey cultivates “a holistic approach toward corporate leadership. They focus on the fundamentals of what makes a great leader and the importance of their influence on a community or organization… While learning the ins and outs of business management can make you knowledgeable, the most significant impact is how you influence others with your knowledge. The most outstanding leaders can lead by the Golden Rule while valuing the feedback from those they lead. It’s about establishing trust and influence.”
An education in business goes beyond the knowledge you acquire through instruction and experience – though this is certainly important. It goes beyond the skills you learn and practice – including analysis, communication, creative problem-solving, and networking. And “who you know” is not simply about using influence to climb. Grounded in the Benedictine tradition of education, which orders the mind and the heart to the Good, Belmont Abbey’s MBA understands “who you know” as a call to true, faithful, and ethical leadership within a community. In fact, to servant leadership. The authentic leader builds trust and influence in service to something more – embracing not just “what” or “how” but also, and more meaningfully, “who” and “why.”
“This program,” Catherine states, “made me a better leader. Understanding the fundamentals of leadership with an enhanced ethical approach made me confident in understanding why servant-style leadership benefits the greater good and how Benedictine values reiterate the importance of understanding emotional intelligence. It made me realize how effective leadership is a two-way street built on communication and trust.” It depends on a recognition of personhood from both sides, a recognition that allows us to seek the Good with honesty, humility, and hope.
The Belmont Abbey MBA – while it certainly prepares students to excel professionally – embraces and cultivates leadership rooted in the personal, living dignity of communities. And for Catherine Barber, as a business professional, a wife and mother, and a member of a faith community, this holistic approach to corporate leadership created a meaningful synthesis between the demands of the business world and the essential, Benedictine values that embrace excellence and virtue in all things.
For Abbey MBA graduates like Catherine, and for all those they influence and encounter, these Benedictine hallmarks speak to the definition of servant leadership because they place community, stability, and stewardship at the heart of this calling. In keeping with love and hospitality, they seek to build up thriving communities where all are free to realize their authentic and God-given potential.
It’s not what you know. It’s who you know. Because the person before us and the community behind us give leadership its meaning and its purpose.
Consider what a Belmont Abbey MBA could mean for your future. Click here to learn more and embrace your calling today!
