Posted on 02/19/2003 8:48:33 AM PST by heyheyhey
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
By MARCI ELLIOTT,
Ave Maria University has reached a turning point.
It has received a provisional license from the Florida Commission for Independent Education, a state board that grants licensure to nonpublic educational institutions, that has opened the door to accepting students.
"This is a critical milestone for us," university President Michael J. Healy Jr. said Tuesday. "It means we're now able to recruit students and offer courses for credit."
Healy and other Ave Maria officials, including the Rev. Joseph Fessio, a Jesuit priest serving as the university's chancellor, have been waiting for the license since the Nov. 20 announcement that Ave Maria would be coming to Collier County.
"We already have 20-something (student) applications, and we hope to have at least 50 for fall semester," Healy said. "We would be very happy with 100 — and if we have more than 100, we'll be pinching ourselves quite a bit."
Ave Maria is the first Catholic university to be built in the United States in 40 years. Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza and former owner of the Detroit Tigers baseball franchise, is the founder of the university, which will be built on agricultural land about 26 miles east of Naples and 10 miles southwest of Immokalee.
The university is projected to be completed in fall 2006, but it's currently housed in a 10-acre interim campus at The Vineyards development, off Vanderbilt Beach Road in North Naples.
Monaghan has established other Catholic schools in Michigan, including Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti. He originally wanted to build Ave Maria University in nearby Ann Arbor, but the town council there rejected his request for a zoning change. After that, he checked out sites in four other states, including property around Naples, and finally chose the Collier site offered by Barron Collier Cos.
Healy and Fessio said three faculty members from Ave Maria College in Michigan plan to relocate to teach at the Naples campus, and three more permanent faculty members will be hired.
"We've received several hundred applications since the November announcement," Fessio said. "The curriculum for this fall will include what we call the core curriculum, including philosophy, theology, science, literature, history and mathematics."
For the first couple of years, Ave Maria University will accept freshmen and sophomores, who will take the core curriculum. After that, juniors and seniors will be admitted.
"We'll see if we have enough juniors and seniors for particular majors so we can accommodate those majors," Fessio said." By fall 2004, we'll accept all grades."
Two four-story buildings at Ave Maria's site in The Vineyards are ahead of their projected July completion date, said Healy. They'll house classrooms and living quarters for students. The first of eight duplexes will be built to house faculty and staff members and are expected to be completed by September, with the rest completed by November.
Ave Maria bought property across the street from the campus site to build a church, lecture hall and more classrooms.
Healy and Fessio said Ave Maria's progress was moving fast, with far more responses from local residents than expected.
"I don't know if we could go any faster without stumbling," Fessio said.
He noted that the area was rich in Catholic history, yet there have not been any Catholic institutions of higher learning in Southwest Florida.
"We are way overdue — and we're happy that, thanks to the state of Florida, we are now open for business."
For more information visit www.avemaria.edu.
We Catholics believe She was His Mother.
Chosen by God the Father, overshadowed by God the Holy Spirit to become the Mother of God the Son. We believe She is quite special in Her relation to God in the Holy Trinity.
Wow, you're right! Maybe they should have named it Bob Jones or Oral Roberts or some other name that honors Christ.
There is one Lutheran Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, IL that is famous for abortions. And if abortion doesn't kill the baby they leave it to die of cold and starvation in the soiled utility closets.
:-D
Same with IA. At least they wern't named after Mary;)
LOL! Point, set, match to conservonator:-)
I think those are even worse: the audacity of any man (or woman) to name a college or university (that claims to be Christian) after themselves truly reveals who they are trying to elevate.
This is true. The Spanish established St. Augustine, on the Atlantic coast of Florida, but they also landed on the Gulf Coast and did a considerable amount of exploration. The priests who accompanied them - mostly Franciscans on these occasions, if I recall correctly, although Jesuits often accompanied Spanish expeditions - attempted to preach to the Indians.
Eventually they were able to set up a mission chain that ran through Florida and much of the Southeast, and was finally destroyed and abandoned. Particular enemies of the missions were the South Carolinians of British extraction who made raids on Florida to recover their slaves, who had fled to Florida because they could gain their freedom here.
Virtually nothing of these missions remains now. Unlike the California missions, the Southeast missions were made of wood. And the Southeast climate, not to mention the good ol' Southern bugs, ate them up.
Alternatively, maybe the packaging isn’t as important as the content…
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