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Although it is summer, the members of the 91���� teaching faculty have kept busy these last five weeks, as they do each year, in the College’s Tutor Summer Program.

The program, which begins shortly after Commencement, consists of thrice-weekly, 90-minute morning seminars that run through the end of June. Meeting in the very classrooms where they usually teach, the tutors engage in conversations led by one of their peers.

“The seminars are meant to help the tutors acquire a better understanding of the seminal works in the program, or to help prepare them to teach some of the more technically challenging works that are read in our program,” explains Dean John J. Goyette. “They are also an occasion for the teaching faculty to work together and learn from each other. Most of the time, the tutors are leading seminars for students; the summer provides an opportunity for the tutors to be the students and to learn from each other.”

The subjects of the seminars vary from summer to summer. This year Dr. Glen Coughlin led one on St. Thomas Aquinas’ On Being and Essence, while Dr. John Nieto led another on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. “Both are seminal texts read in Senior Philosophy,” says Dr. Goyette. “By gaining a deeper understanding of these books, the tutors can see better how the study of philosophy culminates in the study of God as the First Being and Common Good of the universe.” Additionally, Dr. Michael Letteney led a third seminar about the theme of place and space as understood by various thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Newton and Kant. “This is an important topic for seeing the relation between philosophy and modern natural science,” Dr. Goyette adds.

Per custom, this summer the College also hosted two one-day seminars for all faculty, both teaching and administrative, on Charles DeKoninck’s Ego Sapientia. “The reading is an extended meditation on the Church’s attribution of the title of Wisdom to Mary, the Mother of God,” says Dr. Goyette. “These seminars were a great occasion to reflect together on the fundamental role of Mary in the economy of salvation.”