Dec. 7, 2021 (Irving, TX) — On the feast of one of the great doctors of the Church, the University of Dallas announces the launch of the St. Ambrose Center for Catholic Liberal Education and Culture. The purpose of the center is to extend the university’s core mission — that the pursuit of wisdom, of truth and of virtue are the proper and primary ends of education — to the world at large.

Director Jeffrey Lehman, MA ’99 PhD ’02, who also directs the university's Classical Education graduate program, noted that the St. Ambrose Center’s programs and initiatives aim to provide educational resources for K-12 students, parents, teachers and administrators, as well as alumni and friends of the university, in their pursuit of the moral and intellectual virtues throughout their lives. 

“Every program and initiative of the St. Ambrose Center is designed to assist teachers, students and lifelong learners of all sorts and at all ages to live out the virtues in their daily lives and to encourage them to pursue their own well-being and that of their family, community, country and church,” Lehman said. “Inspired by St. Ambrose, who taught the great St. Augustine, the University of Dallas seeks through the St. Ambrose Center to provide valuable resources to delight, to instruct and to inspire those beyond our campus classrooms in order that they may accomplish their purposes in whatever vocations they have been called by God to pursue.”

The St. Ambrose Center is a witness to the great hope we have in the power of Catholic liberal education to orient students of every age to wisdom, truth and virtue,” said University of Dallas President Jonathan J. Sanford, Ph.D. “Under Dr. Lehman’s leadership, the St. Ambrose Center extends the reach of the University of Dallas in its efforts to renew our culture through an unwavering commitment to educational excellence and a formation in the true, good and beautiful.” 

The current initiatives of the St. Ambrose Center include:

• Liberal Learning for Life, which creates, cultivates and connects lifelong lovers of the liberal arts. The Liberal Learning for Life Podcast features compelling, pithy and rich conversations with UD friends and faculty.

• The Arts of Liberty Project, an ongoing educational initiative at the University of Dallas that educates students, teachers and lifelong learners in the purpose and power of the liberal arts and liberal education. 

• The Studies in Catholic Faith and Culture program, which offers a free video series in which lifelong learners can explore the many ways in which the human person has been understood in the Catholic tradition of liberal education. 

• The Classical Education Graduate Program at the University of Dallas, which, grounded in the venerable Western tradition of the liberal arts and liberal education, aspires to form teachers and administrators for service in K-12 schools committed to recovering and renewing that inspiring and fruitful tradition.

• The K-12 Classical Curriculum Project, which seeks to develop curricula that, through rigorous study and thoughtful conversation, train students’ minds toward “sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candor, self-command and steadiness of view” (St. John Henry Newman). Our curricula and professional development programs are designed to guide students to think about and to love the true, the good and the beautiful. 

To learn more about the St. Ambrose Center and its various initiatives, please visit https://saintambrosecenter.udallas.edu/.