For our future to be vibrant and alive and ever-new, we need young men and women who
are critical thinkers, competent writers, and active civil servants. By that I mean,
fully engaged in our society; not people that are looking to flee the world, flee the culture,
live in a bubble. People that are willing, and ready, and prepared from their education
to come out and make a difference in the world, and engage the culture and change it. And
we know that in higher education, a lot of times, the story for many that come to campuses
in America is a sad story. It's almost a story of the Prodigal Son, where they say give me
my inheritance. Give me the money that you, my parents, have saved up for college and
I'm going to go squander it on binge drinking and the hook-up cultures and so forth that
you hear about at college campuses. We don't have that culture here. We've got normal,
wonderful, young men and women studying on our campus. I've gotten to know a lot of them.
They're great people. And they're here for those three reasons. First, excellence. This
is a difficult university, and I want to tell you that up front. It's going to be demanding.
This is not a place you can go and have an easy ride. You're going to have to work. Our
faculty members hold diplomas from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Cambridge,
Boston College, Notre Dame. You name the elite schools, our faculty members have diplomas
from those universities and could teach anywhere in America, but they chose to come to Ave
Maria because they wanted to live and work in an environment that supported their faith
and scholarship. And that's what they've found.
