For more than thirty yearsthe Collegiate Summer Program for High-School Students has introducedparticipants to the same spirit of liberal arts education that animatesthe College. In less than two weeks this program conveys, in miniature,the full range of the enterprise of education. It takes seriously theindividual participants, recognizing that all are capable ofachievement beyond what they have come to expect—that each has aunique work in life to discover and complete. Additional program features include:

• Intense study of great works—Though the program is intense, it is never mere drudgery. Students do not just master an impressive array of readings, taken from important works of Western culture, but they come to understand why they should learn.
• True academic community—Scholars from among the Thomas More College alumni teach and proctor the Collegiate Summer Program, living in residence during the program and supervising all recreational activities with the aid of resident faculty.
• Improve writing skills—A series of writing assignments is given in each course. In the evenings, faculty meet with students individually to help them with their writing, especially with regard to clarity of thought and expression.
• Instilling a love of learning—The truly lasting effect of the program is that it conveys to high school students a love of learning, a spirit of abundance and generosity, and a sense of hope in what they may accomplish in life.

The ORDER OF THE DAY

The activities of the program provide a unified setting for the learning that takes place in the classroom. Each day is ordered by daily chapel as well as swimming and sports at nearby Naticook Lake. Students also benefit from several regional day trips:

• Boston. The city that has defined the spirited American character. Students are guided along the Freedom Trail—through Boston Common and Old North Church, past monuments to the USS Constitution.
• Maine Coast. Swim in the Atlantic ocean on the same coast that Ishmael describes in Moby Dick as magnetic: “But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land....”
• The Mountain. Hike Grand Monadnock, the “most climbed mountain in the world” (a safe, but challenging climb). Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and many others hiked Monadnock and endorsed it in their writings as a symbol of spiritual awareness.