With the start of the new academic year, students at Thomas Aquinas College are now, for the first time, attending classes in the College’s newest building, St. Gladys Hall.
On Convocation Day, just after the morning’s Mass of the Holy Spirit, the community gathered on the building’s southern plaza for a dedication ceremony. Presiding was this year’s matriculation speaker, Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver, joined by the college’s four chaplains. Members of the board of governors and the faculty, as well as students and their families, prayed along as Archbishop Aquila asked God to bless the building, the learning that will take place within it, and the students and tutors who will populate its classrooms.
“We ask that those entrusted with the education of young people at Thomas Aquinas College may teach their students to join the discoveries of human wisdom with the truth of the Gospel, so that they will be able to keep the true faith and to live up to it in their lives,” said Archbishop Aquila.
The construction of St. Gladys Hall — the thirteenth building erected since the college acquired its campus in the 1970s — took place over the course of the past spring and summer. Located on the southwest corner of the academic quadrangle, the building houses eight classrooms designed to facilitate the small, seminar discussions that are at the heart of the college’s unique academic program. It is named for St. Gladys, a mother, a queen, a contemplative, and the patron saint of Fritz Burns’ beloved wife, Gladys Carson Burns.
“St. Gladys Hall will be the site of the growth in intellectual and moral virtue for our faculty and our students,” said college president Michael McLean. “We are deeply grateful to the Fritz B. Burns Foundation, whose generous donation made its construction possible. And we are deeply grateful as well to Archbishop Aquila for presiding at this ceremony.”
