Players Perform An Oscar Wilde Classic
The Christendom College Players brought Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan to life at the Warren County High School auditorium on November 9-11.

"I was very pleased with the performances and very proud of the dedicated, hard working cast and crew," the play’s director Dr. Patrick Keats said. "It was an interesting combination of experienced and inexperienced performers—as well as a good representation of all the classes, from freshmen to seniors.”

Bright and detailed costumes captured the 1890’s Victorian London setting as the student cast brought Wilde’s ingenious plot to life. The talented cast included senior Sarah Halbur, freshman Monica Dilworth, sophomore Nick Gossin, sophomore Alex Clark, sophomore Rocina Daez, junior James Ciskanik, and many others.

Every year the Christendom Players produce two plays: one in the fall and one in the spring. And because Christendom does not have a drama department, students from across all disciplines are welcome to audition for the performances, making Christendom's liberal arts experience rich in the fine arts as well.



Sophomore Rocina Daez and Senior Alexis Thornton gave energetic performances.


Lady Windermere (freshman Monica Dilworth) gets unsolicited counsel from Mrs. Erlynne (senior Sarah Halbur).


Lord Windermere discovers his wife's fan in the quarters of Lord Darlington.


Halbur's performance of Mrs. Erlynne was spectacular.


Congratulations to the Players for another great performance!






Holy Hike!
Twenty-one students joined Head Chaplain Father Planty for a day trip to Harper's Ferry, WV, on Saturday. They hiked up to Maryland Heights, where they prayed together and received a short talk by Father Planty. They then spent the beautiful afternoon exploring the historic town.


Enjoying the view of Harper's Ferry.



Prose & Poetry
Both literary classics and quirky new poems were brought to life at Sacred Grounds on Tuesday night as the Christendom library hosted its annual Prose & Poetry Night. Students and faculty alike took their turns reading and reciting from memory works from the likes of T.S. Eliot, Ogden Nash, and W.H. Auden. While partaking of the many refreshments provided, the audience heard elegies, lyrical poems, two-line rhymes, everything in between. Students also read some of their own original poetry. The hit of the night was the array of recitations given by some of the faculty. Students were delighted to hear Fr. Planty deliver a Spanish poem, English professor Dr. Linton read “Custard the Cowardly Dragon,” and Student Activities Director Caitlin Bowers recite a beautiful French canticle, to name a few.

Freshman Amy Marter, who recited an original poem, thoroughly enjoyed her first Poetry night. “It was a lot of fun and very inspiring to hear such a variety of poems from students and faculty members,” she said. “There are some ideas that can only be expressed in poetry and it was so cool to be at an event where those ideas could be expressed.”


Professor Lippiello recites T.S. Eliot.


Junior Grace Gniewek shares a few short poems.


Fr. Planty captivates the audience with a Spanish poem.







At Home in Rome
As I mentioned, Rome has begun to feel like home for the students here. It sounds so cute to say it – the words even rhyme. However, it’s easy to forget that it took several months to grow accustomed to the city. Obviously staying in the Eternal City has brought countless unique blessings and experiences. However as the semester draws to an end, we’ve realized that the greatest lessons learned have come from the little inconveniences of living in a foreign country.

For instance, cooking in Rome…. Hotel Residence Candia offers rooms complete with kitchens, which is exciting for the students who love to cook. However, we quickly discovered shopping for ingredients a little tricky. The Italian language isn’t just spoken here…its on all the labels in the stores too! Personally, cheeses are confusing even in English. So when shopping for specific things like all-fabric bleach, your Italian dictionary quickly becomes your best friend. The plus side of cooking in Italy is that all the food is fresh. Especially the milk. It took a number of tries to successfully avoid curdle in the milk and to find the correct type of cheese when making simple macaroni and cheese.

Besides language differences, there are also cultural differences; the number of things we take for granted, such as not paying in exact change or places being open all day, is amazing! Pranzo, the Italian version of a siesta, initially sounded like a great idea when we first learned about it. Until our first church-hopping excursion was a failure because we started right after lunch, in typical American fashion. We then realized the only people benefiting from pranzo were those getting the naps. However, the oddity of churches closing during the day has left us wandering the streets, helping us discover stores or our favorite gelatoria.

Adding the fact that college students need to save money makes things even trickier. There are no free shopping bags here, so we’ve learned to save and reuse them. Fresh water is available either in bottles or at the city fountains; we’ve saved money by refilling bottles across the street from Residence Candia. While the cashiers soon got over the American students bringing their own shopping bags, the Italian passersby will never stop staring at students filling up numbers of jugs at a street fountain.

Besides teaching us to think ahead, improvise, and practice patience, these instances have enabled us to laugh at ourselves. One of my friends observed that one of the worst things is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist. So later, when I was filling up water bottles and a tourist came up to ask for directions, I wondered what I looked like and had to smile.

Living in Rome for the past two months has been an adventure – a term that is key because it includes both exciting and fun times as well as those when things don’t go exactly as planned. The trick to traveling (and life in general) is to learn from everything, the good as well as the inconvenient.


It's the season for pumpkins and gourds even in Italy.


Can someone help Joe Brizek? Is this the right detergent, Mom?


At home in Candia.


Taking advantage of the fine Italian ingredients can produce amazing results in the kitchen.


Marisa DePalma finds out that "her" gelateria has 150 flavors of gelato!


Christendom ladies vie for one of Andrew Hepler's roses.


On tour with Prof. Liz Lev at the Vatican Museum.




Education for A Lifetime Program
This year Christendom College launched its Education for a Lifetime Program (ELP). Part of the program is a new class requirement for students in their freshman and sophomore years. The purpose of the program is to instill greater confidence in the students of Christendom, as they take their next steps following graduation.

The Freshman Class of 2016 was the first to experience the program this fall semester. For the first six weeks of school, freshman students learned about the “importance of a liberal arts education and how to apply it to career goals after graduation.” The class was broken into three sections and taught by Director of Career Development Mr. Mike Mochel, Librarian Stephen Pilon, and Vice President for Academic Affairs Steve Snyder.

One particularly fun session, was a three part workshop taught by Mr. Mochel, where students were able to get their results to the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) personality type assessment test, which they had previously taken on the first day of orientation.

“I loved being able to see my results on the personality type assessment and learn ways to apply my certain personality type in the workplace,” said Freshman Maryann Riccardi.

As students’ progress through the ELP program, they will learn even more skills to benefit them in today's competitive workplace. The Education for a Lifetime Program is a great complement to the College's fantastic liberal arts education and will help students embark on successful careers after graduation.

Lady Crusaders Earn First Win of the Season
The women’s basketball team traveled to Mont Alto, Penn., last night to take on USCAA opponent Penn State Mont Alto. The Lady Crusaders have not lost to the Nittany Lions and despite Mont Alto showcasing a revamped team, including 7 freshmen, the women of Christendom had no intention of losing for the first time!

Donning their new away jerseys the Lady Crusaders came out a bit slow after the bus ride, trailing 0-6 in the first 2-minutes of the game. But the women shook off the slow start and steadily improved as the game went on. Freshman Rachel Snyder spearheaded a tenacious defense that helped the Lady Crusaders build a small lead in the first half. Point guard Morgan Kavanagh paced the team on offense and, with great unselfish play, the team found open teammates time and time again to make buckets.

Beginning the second half, the Crusaders kept up their intensity on the defensive end holding Mont Alto scoreless for over 3 minutes and controlling the defensive boards despite being outsized. Junior Hannah Ethridge led the Lady Crusaders with 11 rebounds for the game.

Fueled by an uneasy home crowd, the Nittany Lions made a surge toward the end of the game, cutting a seven point lead to just two with nine seconds to go. Rachel Snyder was fouled and buried the first of her two free-throws. After missing the second free-throw, the Lions raced forward for a last second chance, but their efforts never came close and the Lady Crusaders emerged with their first win of the season by a final score of 50-47.

“I am so proud of these girls," head coach Katy Vander Woude said. "We fought hard the entire game and didn’t fold in the end but remained strong despite the home crowd. Our entire team deserves the credit for this win as everyone played an important part in the win.”

In fact all of the eight Lady Crusaders who entered the game scored at least one point, including Morgan Kavanagh who led the team with 14 points. Fellow junior Bridget Vander Woude finished with eight points and nine rebounds while Elizabeth Slaten, Hannah Etheridge, Cecelia Heisler, and Rachel Snyder all finished with at least six points.

“We need to keep working hard in practice. We have many new parts to the team and each practice and game helps us play better with each other,” Coach Vander Woude said.

Both the men and women's basketball teams are off until Tuesday, when they travel to Washington, D.C, to play Gallaudet University before Thanksgiving break.

Q. I’m looking at a couple other colleges (I know, shame on me), particularly ones that offer a Great Books type program, and I was wondering what your thoughts were on these types of colleges. And why isn’t Christendom a Great Books program?

A. There are a number of good Catholic colleges out there today offering Great Books type programs – some are stricter in their interpretation of the Great Books, others a little more loose. Most of these schools are small, and they are very attractive to a certain type of student.

A Great Books Program, is one which studies a certain limited number of primary texts in a Socratic or discussion type forum. No textbooks or secondary sources are used in a Great Books program and all students study the exact same subjects and receive one degree, a BA in Liberal Arts, without having choices of majors.

Christendom would be categorized as offering a classical liberal arts education. We rely heavily on many of the exact same primary texts read in a Great Books program, but we also use many secondary sources to gain deeper understanding of the subject matter. Additionally, we rely heavily on the great education and knowledge of our esteemed faculty. All of them have read more on the subjects that they teach than probably the whole student body put together. We rely on their insights into their subject matter and want to hear what they think about this or that topic in their area of expertise, as opposed to relying on the insights of college-aged students (which happens quite often in a Great Books Program).

Also, the vast majority of our classes are lecture format (with an average class size of around 18-22 students) with students having the ability to ask questions and make comments during class. Although we do have a very strong core curriculum which lasts two and a half years, following the completion of the core, students are given the opportunity to delve deeper into one of six areas of study and major in Theology, Philosophy, English Language and Literature, Classics, Political Science, or History.

Additionally, most Great Books programs do not offer history as part of their curriculum because generally, in order to do an in-depth survey of history, textbooks are used. Here at Christendom, we rely heavily on College founder Dr. Warren Carroll's History of Christendom series of books.

Of course, there are other differences, but these are the ones I think may be easiest understood. I hope that this clarifies a couple of the differences between a Great Books Program and what Christendom offers. Here is our core curriculum at a glance.

Here is an interesting (although a little long) look at the idea of studying the Great Books by a former University of Dallas professor named Frederick D. Wilhelmsen.

In short, Christendom is not a Great Books program because we wanted to provide our students with the age-old scholastic approach to education (the same approached used at all of the Catholic colleges and universities founded in Europe back in the day on through the 20th Century), giving them a solid core curriculum in the liberal arts, ordered by Thomistic wisdom within an historical matrix. This could not be achieved through a Great Books program.

I welcome any further questions on the matter that you have and don’t ever be ashamed of looking at other colleges – it’s how you realize which is best for you!
Well said.

Director of Admissions
tmcfadden@christendom.edu
800.877.5456 ext. 1290

If anyone has questions about applying, visiting, scholarships, financial aid, campus life, rules and regulations, majors, core curriculum, transfer credits, or even about the food here at Christendom, please do not hesitate to contact me at any time.