Reflection from Our President

The list of triumphs this year is staggering – but we seldom feel triumphant.

We have the highest average standardized test score out of all Newman Guide colleges and universities. We are two years old; the second youngest university is ten-times our senior. This year, we will be the largest single-location apprenticeship program in the United States. The runners up are billion dollar companies. We are a start up spending every dollar we have.

Why don't we feel more triumphant?

There is an immensity in everything we do. No matter how big an accomplishment we celebrate, there is yet a larger mountain in front of us that we must summit.

Think about this for a moment: we are designing new courses in electrical, plumbing, HVAC, carpentry, traditional building, theology, philosophy, literature, mathematics. We are identifying, inspecting, and purchasing – not just buildings – but entire blocks of a dilapidated downtown. We are designing, planning, and building labs. We are renovating decaying buildings so that students can live in them (and parents can trust us!). We are reconfiguring the streets and hardscapes of downtown. We are founding a construction company. We are developing a neighborhood. We are launching a plumbing service company. We are working on academic papers and writing groundbreaking books. We are working on new building techniques and researching new methods. We have to hire people to do all of this.

The team at the College of St Joseph the Worker has – collectively – relocated from twenty states. They have – collectively – taken pay cuts of nearly $2mm. They have worked tirelessly to create something that has never been done before. And, despite the colossal workload, it is happening.

These accomplishments are not small. We are growing fast and the start-up chaos has defined much of the speed.

It gives me great confidence in our mission, knowing that while we work long days, and our students make sacrifice, often making due with what we have, knowing we all build a better future for the coming classes of students - that all of this toil is more about shaping us as people—students included—than it is about ensuring the success of the college. Our Lord will see this college succeed, if indeed it is His will.

When I think about the Workshop in Nazareth of our Patron, St. Joseph, I don’t think about speed and I don't think about toil. The workshop was never the point. Those who were in it – that’s the point. St. Joseph worked in adoration everyday. In our own labor, we have a genuine experience of our world’s Creator and Redeemer.

Amidst the growth, the hard and grueling labor, the decision fatigue and the start–up exhaustion, I am dazzled by the fact that my team has not lost sight of this. The relentless struggle to see the face of Christ clearly: this has remained the desire of those at the College of St Joseph the Worker. They are convinced that a better way is possible; that we can offer the truths that make life most human to the next generation – and that they have the skills to manifest those truths to the world. They are, at heart, evangelists.

We cannot pass on to the next generation what we ourselves do not have. So please, pray for us. Pray that God’s grace would overflow from us into the students. Pray that our families would be prioritized first and foremost, and that our vocation as parents would inform our instruction and shaping of students. Pray that our students would remain the center and focus of everything we do.

Pray that somehow, this ridiculous mission of changing the world, would be made manifest in the young men who graduate and go out into the world.

Pax et bonum,
Dr. Imam