This summer has seen the announcement of a new trade school in Illinois, San Damiano College for the Trades—a former Franciscan friary being converted into a Catholic college that emphasizes the great books alongside training in the trades.
Kent Lasnoski, PhD, the founding president, took time recently to speak with Catholic World Report about the project.
CWR: You are starting a new trades college: what is its primary mission?
Kent Lasnoski: The Primary mission is to answer Christ’s call to St. Francis of Assisi, “rebuild my church.” We mean to do that by helping students recover the dignity of work, especially the work of the hands, but also the public work of liturgy, the intellectual work of learning, and the work of heading a domestic church as a holy husband and father.
CWR: How do the liberal arts integrate? Why are they important for tradesmen?
Kent Lasnoski: Thinking and doing have too long been isolated by a culture that only considers work in the “information economy” as dignified, creative, or thoughtful. It takes the full engagement of a human person to build a house, a church, from the hand, to the heart, to the head.
The liberal arts is the education that forms and perfects the whole person, so he is master of himself. He is free. That freedom elevates man’s labor beyond merely a “manual” activity to provide his daily bread. The liberally educated person becomes, by the work of his hands, a conscious collaborator in God the Father’s creativity.
The liberally educated person knows not only how to swing a hammer, but why hammer swinging matters.
CWR: Tell us about the curriculum: what will it involve?
Kent Lasnoski: The curriculum will be a three-year program toward an associate degree, combining spiritual, intellectual, and manual education.
The spiritual curriculum involves pilgrimages, participation in liturgy and the divine office, spiritual direction, and a schola (choir).
The intellectual formation centers around humanities and theology courses in the great books, as well as classes on restoration, story-telling, politics, and business rhetoric.
The manual curriculum is a foundational introduction to carpentry, roofing, electrical, ecclesial restoration, and tree trimming. Union and non-union apprenticeships fill out the rest of the technical instruction.
CWR: What is your financial model? How will students graduate debt free?
Kent Lasnoski: It’s simple, really. While receiving formation from the College, students work 24hrs/wk during their first two academic years, and 40hrs/wk in their last academic year. This means students will make more money over three years than the total cost of attendance. With a little help from their parents, students can pay their monthly tuition to the College and still have money left to save.
CWR: Who is a good candidate for application? What sort of people will fit well as students at San Damiano’s?
Kent Lasnoski: Most generally, a good candidate is anyone who zealously desires to share in the mission of recovering the dignity of work while learning to rebuild God’s Church. I imagine many Catholic young people educated in a classically minded manner—whether in homeschool or at an away-school—will find themselves attracted to San Damiano College, especially those with a propensity for working with their hands and a desire to graduate College without debt.
CWR: How did you come to found the school? What is your background?
Kent Lasnoski: Ultimately, the Holy Spirit has been motivating our Bishop Paprocki toward renewing the mission of the Springfield Junior College and the St. James Trade school which existed in his diocese from early in the twentieth century.
A year ago, Bishop Paprocki invited me to discern with him the possibility of opening a school that would combine both a trades/classical education and an associate degree. My original training as a Catholic moral theologian, specializing in Catholic marriage, sexual ethics, and bioethics, did little to directly prepare me for founding a school.
Thankfully, my past nine years as associate professor and Assistant Dean at Wyoming Catholic College have allowed me to participate in teaching and various levels of administration, and this has prepared me for such an exciting opportunity.
CWR: What are the next steps? How can interested donors or students help or find out more?
Kent Lasnoski: The most important step for San Damiano College is to pray for the support of the mission.
The central, concrete next step for San Damiano College is to finish and submit the application for operating authority in the state of Illinois. The state has to ensure that new Colleges can deliver on what they claim they will achieve, so the process is quite involved. We are also in the process of renovating future shop spaces.
Interested donors can support San Damiano College here. Students interested in the College can connect with our team here.
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Grammar marm here – Schools don’t launch. People launch schools.
Perhaps you could get support from a manufacturer ( or several) for HVAC labs – there are a lot of small local businesses which need HVAC techs….I worked for two years building power lines before being drafted Friday 13th June 1969…the experience was invaluable …the people were very clever, skilled and hard working…forever grateful for that education…always amazed what a small crew of 5 good ol’ boys could get done in a day.
What a great idea for other Catholic colleges to implement – especially the four year liberal arts one. Catholic colleges ought to use the dorm room space and other campus aeas during the summer breaks to utilize the largely unused facilities to run such programs. Not every Catholic man destined to be a husband and father wants to be a lawyer, doctor, engineer, MBA, or academic. This kind of a program where students work at a trade also answers in part the problem of leaving college with huge debt.
Yes, and you need the ability to do those occupations as well.
Wow. Much needed. May this vision be carried out to the Glory of God and may thete be many more around the country. This kind of education should be available to all our young people.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Gov. Pritzker and the extremely liberal Democratic Congress in Springfield rejects the application of what sounds like a wonderful educational facility. (I recently moved OUT of Illinois to a more “sane” state.)
I’m glad to see a school like this get started, and grateful for the work of those launching it. Yet I am baffled by the decision to locate it in Illinois, a state that is so hostile to Catholic values.
I know Catholics who have moved out of Illinois, and who were warned not to (attempt to) adopt children while residing there because the state would be so opposed to their values, for example. That sort of government will not help with recruiting good teachers for this school.
*Side note for CWR: For the sake of journalistic integrity, I believe Julian Kwasniewski’s affiliation/relationship with the school should be noted at the start or end of the article.
We read of the Great Books in combination with “the mission of recovering the dignity of work, especially the work of the hands…”
A reminder of St. John Paul II and his encyclical “On Human Work” (Laborem Exercens, 1981). He writes: “…we must first [!] direct our attention to A FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE [italics]: the question of finding work, or in other words, the issue of SUITABLE EMPLOYMENT FOR ALL WHO ARE CAPABLE OF IT” (n. 18).
A thought, here, about UNEMPLOYMENT…. Because “everything is interconnected” (Laudato Si), what if we had a new papal document that connected the economy to not only the natural ecology, but even more to the “human ecology”? What if instead of pandering to sociological symptoms such as the LGBTQ religion, we got into the connectedness of how job insecurity/unemployment contributes to distracted/remote and absentee father figures, and how younger-generation insecurity contributes to escapism especially into sexual experimentation and tribal LGBTQ-ism?
A quite different “sociological-scientific foundation” than synodality’s Cardinal Hollerich fondles when he signals to upend moral theology be redefining sexual morality….That is, what if Cardinal Fernandez’s most recent Fiducia Supplicans and the blessing of “irregular couples” (as couples) is seen clearly as enabling ever more irregular couples–all betrayed by our eroded sociological-economic foundation?
What about the Dignity of WORK as it sustains the Dignity of the FAMILY? This, about the culture of the West today as compared to earlier history (from whence commeth some of the mentioned Great Books):
“Late marriages and small families became the rule, and men satisfied their sexual instincts by homosexuality or by relations with slaves and prostitutes. This aversion to marriage and the deliberate restriction of the family by the practice of infanticide and abortion was undoubtedly the main cause of the decline of ancient Greece, as Polybius pointed out in the second century B.C. And the same factors were equally powerful in the society of the Empire. . . .” (Christopher Dawson, “The Patriarchal Family in History,” The Dynamics of World History, 1962).
SUMMARY: About “suitable work” in the trades, there’s a book out there somewhere entitled “They Can’t Outsource my Hammer.”
Tom, I always presumed that as Catholics we were all brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re family. What’s needed to disclose other than a love for Christ?