Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1908 — Indiana School That Educates Both Heart and Head [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Indiana School That Educates Both Heart and Head

ST. JOSEPH’S COLLEGE. St Joseph’s College, located near Rensselaer, Ind., has enjoyed a remarkable growth, and Is now a:suming prominence as one of the principal educational institutions of the state. The college is under tte management of the Catholic Fathers of the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood. The college buildings are seven in number, and the grounds cover 400 acres. The school takes pride in educating both "heart and head” of youth.

(M. W. Carr in Indianapolis Star.) Adjoining the city of Rensselaer on thf southwest and ensconced behind clumps of woods—those islands of virgin forest in the clearing that have escaped the woodman’s ax, or the greed of the husbandman for broader cultivated fields—is situated the classic village of Collegeville, the home of St. Joseph’s College, conducted by the fathers of the Congregation of the Most Precious Blood. The college buildings, including the community houses, are seven in number, and are modern, commodious and substantial. Another building for chapel and refectory purpes s, to cost $60,000, is planned for next year. When this is completed a striking cluster of imposing structures will overlook a spacious campus and grounds 400 acres in extent, with a lake, the whole presenting an unusually attractive Beene. Little has hitherto been heard of this institution of learning, so

quietly and unostentatiously has it pursued its humble course, ard so timid has it been to raise its head above its woody surroundings. And yet, after only seventeen yea;s of existence, with its 250 resident students, it merits high rank among the schools that in these latter years have given intellectual fame to Indiana. Like St. Claran’s Clonmacnoise of old it wooes the knowledge-seeker from local and distant parts and even from other shores to drink deep from the plentiful fountain of its Pierian spring, and it gives him “good measure, pressed down, and shaken together and running over,” that his hunger may be appeased with the choice things, both moral and intellectual, which he prizes and desiies. While this unpretentious college is abreast of many of the older ones In the high standing of its faculty and professors, in its curriculm of studies and in the other means employed looking to the neds to be attained, it has in addition this speoial excellence, that it pays marked

attention to fundamentals, believing with the monastic teachers of the middle ages that the permanen.y as well as the efficiency and polish of the intellectual superstructure which we call education or learning, d?pends largely on the breadth and depth and stability of its foundation. is therefore the policy and practice of St. Joseph’s never to crowd the beginner, never to cram the lagging student, never to estimate a boy s progress merely by the page 3 he has hurriedly fumbled over. Hence it’s rule requires six years for tte completion of the classical course, four for the normal and three for the commercial, in each of which it is empowered by the state to grant degrees. Coupled with the above, and with the special excellence nam.d, the e is also the pervading influence of religion, with its moral atinosphe e aiding in the enforcement of mild, but rigid discipline the formation of correct habits and the full development of a manly and Christian char-

acter. The church’s experience of more than a thousand years in educational work is tenaciously clung to by these disciples of blessed Caspar del Bufalo, the founder, in 1815, of the congregation of the Most Precious Blood, for they educate the heart along with the head; they yoke science with religion in the work of equipping the youth for the battle of life, and they aim through these means to upbuild and develop the whole man in strength and symmetry, and in that happy proportion which gives open field to the marked talents of each individual student. If parents are bound in conscience to see to the proper secular and religious education of their children, the obligation holds that they seek out or at least not overlook such Institutions as the one here mentioned. Especially is this so when the terms and conditions are both easy and inviting, and when in addition to the mental and moral pabulum the creature comforts are most abundantly supplied.