Awaken the Vision

THE VISIONAwaken

Academic Programs for the Catholic Professional

As a vibrantly Catholic university, we believe that there exists a unity of knowledge each truly educated person is meant to encounter. So our graduate programs are crafted to integrate ethics and business, the history classroom and the board room, while insisting that faith and reason have something crucial to say to each other. It’s at that intersection — where both faith and reason prepare us to live well, to make sound judgments and humane innovations, to serve as beacons for all that is true, good, and beautiful — that we’re offering the most robust formation available to equip Catholic professionals to discover and share the Gospel in their daily lives and work. And as a community of believers, we’re living Ex corde ecclesiae — from the heart of the Church — as we experience together the encounter of God that illuminates all our study and service. I warmly invite you to be part of it.

Monsignor James P. Shea President

University of Mary

As the first Catholic college to offer substantive, nontraditional education for the Catholic professional, the University of Mary has spent decades developing programs that do more than offer practical training for adult learners. Education, for us, has always been for much more than the handing on of skills or even the sharpening of the mind. Our mission is to awaken in our students the Catholic imaginative vision. What does this mean? It means that our programs are designed to give students an entirely new experience of reality. While learning about the technical details of their fields — whether it’s health care or theology or business — we provide courses and experiences intended to overwhelm them with an encounter of the breadth of God, of the epic drama of the Christian life, of the perils and joys written into the pursuit of holiness … and of the call they have to live it. We want them to take to their professions not just with a refined code of ethics or a clearer knowledge of Catholic teaching, but with a vision for Catholic life that is capacious, healing, and joyful, one that beckons them to come to life in God and to bring others with them. Forming that vision is the promise of all the programs that follow.

Applied Catholic Theology

share the faith

Our Master of Arts in Applied Catholic Theology is earned through three stackable certificates and is designed to support those working in a diocese, parish, Catholic school, or Catholic ministry. Studying key areas to support the New Evangelization and our universal call to holiness, students learn together through online classes and the summer institute to better serve the Church.

Stackable Certificates

Students can choose to earn individual certificates and use those credits to earn a full master’s degree.

Sacred Scripture — Develop a coherent understanding of the fourfold sense of Scripture.

Marriage and Family — Study the modern pressures on the family to help meet those challenges in teaching and ministry.

Prayer and Spiritual Direction — Enrich your friendship and communion with the Triune God and equip yourself to receive fruitfully from the life of grace.

Catholic Studies

renew the culture

Our Master of Arts in Catholic Studies program accompanies students through an in-depth exploration of Catholic culture and the Great Tradition, which allows students to apply the tradition to current professional, moral, and intellectual challenges. Fostering friendships based in shared interdisciplinary study and a common pursuit of the Truth, minds are sharpened and hearts are awakened in a mutual quest to apprehend the whole of reality and the fire of God’s grace running all through it.

The Saint John Henry Newman Institute — a oneweek on-campus institute — provides students the opportunity to investigate and understand the great ideas that serve as pillars of the Catholic studies project. Each student participates in this institute as part of the master’s program in Catholic studies.

Summer Latin Institute

engage in tradition

The University of Mary’s Summer Latin Institute provides students with the opportunity to read the great works of Latin literature, scholastic philosophy and theology, and millennia of Church documents in their original language — from Virgil and Augustine to Aquinas and beyond. Through robust language courses, students develop foundational knowledge in core Latin vocabulary, grammar, and syntax — the essential tools for studying Latin and thinking about any human language. Outside of the classroom, students also have the opportunity to participate in cultural activities that focus on the classical roots of western Christian culture.

in the conviction that the truths contained in that vision liberate students in the most profound meaning of human freedom.”

“Catholic education aims not only to communicate facts but also to transmit a coherent, comprehensive vision of life,

— Saint John Paul II

Doctor of Business Administration

lead with insight

Business leaders, executives, and professionals can set themselves apart in the competitive world of business, industry, and finance with a Doctor of Business Administration. Through courses that promise a true understanding of what makes for a happy life for individuals and communities, students become virtuous leaders with values that transcend the bottom line and drive business that is successful not just as a force for profit, but as a force for good.

Beyond leading in the world of business, our students are steeped in the rich intellectual tradition of Christian, Catholic, Benedictine social thought and its holistic, integrated understanding of the human person.

MBA/MA in Philosophy

Forming students in the rigor and depth of philosophic thought as well as practical business skill, our MBA/MA in Philosophy is a combined degree program meant to advance students’ careers or prepare them for further academic study. Offering Catholic professionals a leg up in business, law, public service, and other fields, the dual degree equips the mind to think clearly about practical challenges as well as deeper, ultimate questions — vital to the long-term flourishing of any organization.

Our students study in a cohort model, engaging friendships with their classmates through online coursework and a one-week summer institute.

Through courses in logic and ethics in addition to management and economics, our students become top candidates in leading corporations across a variety of industries and are well-positioned to lead in everything from project-oriented design and implementation to crafting a corporation’s values and vision.

one degree. two fields.

Virtuous Leadership

generosity of spirit

Unsatisfied with a vision for leadership that reduces it to a relentless, no-matter-the-cost pursuit of organizational success, the specialization in virtuous leadership forms leaders who seek excellence in the workplace by seeking true excellence in the lives of each of its team members — professionally and technically as well as morally and personally. Our master’s degree students learn how to make good business decisions, analyze risk, and manage projects through courses that are integrated with formation in ethics and Catholic social teaching, deepening students’ knowledge especially of the virtues of prudence, self-control, courage, and justice and teaching them how to make such virtues the foundation of any organizational culture.

Bioethics

ethics in action

We are zealous for a Culture of Life. In partnership with the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and as a premiere program of our Saint Gianna School of Health Sciences, the study of bioethics at the University of Mary is guided by and returns to our belief in the fundamental dignity of every human person. Providing rich formation in Catholic social teaching, philosophical and scientific thought, and the Church’s Ethical and Religious Directives, this program prepares professionals in fields such as business, health care, law, medicine, and public affairs to be competent, compassionate, and morally courageous decision-makers in the midst of crucial challenges to the protection of human life and happiness. Theoretical as well as practical, the program offers opportunities to discuss case studies and to engage applied learning experiences, equipping students to think well about the most difficult ethical questions and to articulate effective solutions to them.

Virtue and Sport

pursue excellence

A program designed for coaches, administrators, and others serving athletics, this program examines how virtue can serve both the goal of sport — to win — and its deeper purpose — to make athletes into the men or women they are meant to be. Considering the pursuit of virtue as a pursuit of human excellence, it forms in participants a sense for how the fostering of physical excellence can be integrated and heightened by the fostering of moral excellence — excellence in humility and magnanimity as well as courage, justice, prudence, and temperance. The institute, Greatness Through Virtue, includes talks from seasoned and successful coaches, athletes, and clinical professionals from across the country, panel discussions, shared meals, receptions, and socials. Through dynamic presentations and robust discussions on the characteristics and ingredients of greatness, participants learn how to bring the true purpose of sport — cultivating solid friendships and individual virtue — alive in their work and their athletes.

Catholic Educators

Prime Matters was created in response to an urgent need of our time.

It is increasingly important to get to the heart of things, by learning to recognize first principles of thought and action in whatever is being proposed to us. Prime Matters provides a forum that encourages the art of seeing truly, that helps us to keep the contours of the Christian vision of ourselves, our world, and our ultimate destiny before our minds.

All of our graduate programs are supported by PrimeMatters.com, which offers online students a glimpse into the foundations of the Catholic imaginative vision, how it provides a cohering vision of the world, and unites the various professions and academic disciplines.

Degree Programs for the Catholic Professional

Each of our degree programs are steeped in the Catholic tradition of education. Below you’ll find a selection of the many programs we offer for working adults:

Gary Tharaldson School of Business

Doctor in Business Administration

MBA with a specialization in Virtuous Leadership

MBA with a specialization in Catholic Philanthropy – in partnership with FOCUS

MBA/MA in Philosophy Dual Degree

Certificate in Parish Administration & Management

Certificate in Catholic Philanthropy

Certificate in Virtuous Leadership

School of Arts & Sciences

MA in Catholic Studies

MA in Philosophy/MBA Dual Degree

MA in Applied Catholic Theology

MA in Music – option of a concentration in Sacred Music

Certificate in Sacred Music

Certificate in Marriage & Family

Certificate in Prayer & Spiritual Direction

Certificate in Sacred Scripture

Saint Gianna School of Health Sciences

Doctor in Nursing Practice with specializations in Family Nurse Practitioner and Organizational Leadership

Master of Science in Nursing with specializations in Nursing Leadership and Management, Nurse Educator, and Nursing Informatics

MSN/MBA Health Care

Administration Dual Degree

Master of Science in Bioethics – faithful to the Magisterium, in partnership with the National Catholic Bioethics Center

Liffrig Family School of Education & Behavioral Sciences

Doctor of Education with a specialization in Catholic Studies

Doctor of Education with a specialization in Catholic Education Leadership & Renewal

Master of Education with a specialization in Catholic Studies

Master Science in Counseling with a specialization in Catholic Anthropology

Certificate for Catholic Educators

The University of Mary is a Cardinal Newman Society recommended college — immersed in the Catholic intellectual tradition and infused with a rich sacramental life.

Certificate in Catholic Anthropology for Counselors

Certificate in High School Chaplaincy for Priests

Certificate in Virtue and Sport

“We—the rest of the country, the rest of the world—are watching you, because you represent something fresh and daring. You represent something exciting and promising, and we are watching. And we like what we see.

Terrific things

are happening at Mary!”