Kateri College offers a new approach to higher education. Our education unites the strengths of a Catholic liberal arts education with a vocational trade skill.
The intellectual life and craftsmanship have been separated for too long to the detriment of both areas of human life. The academic often dismisses the skilled laborer as inferior because of a lack of formal education; the craftsman often dismisses the academic as being too bookish and incompetent when it comes to doing things of a practical nature.
An exclusive focus on intellectual education can lead to a disconnect from material reality; while an exclusive focus on vocational training can dull the awareness to transcendent reality.
Kateri College will unite these long-separated educations. Kateri’s liberal arts and practical training will enhance the studies of both in order to graduate students who are learned, well-grounded, ethical, and competent men and women. Our graduates will know their God-given mission in life, be trained to accomplish it, and will be leaders of their local community, the nation, and the Church.
Join us in prayer and financial support to help us open our doors to the first class in Fall 2025.
God created us in His image and likeness to be rational creatures who have an innate sense of wonder. “Liberal Arts” are those academic studies meant to liberate us from bonds of ignorance into the freedom of Truth. These studies enable us to rise above our material nature such that we seek to understand ourselves and the world around us, ultimately leading to a deeper understanding of God. By studying the greatest works of Western Civilization, a person can better understand what it means to be made in the image and likeness of a loving God.
God made us to be co-creators with Him. An innate desire to create and shape things materially is within each of us. Whether a craftsman is building a house, plumbing a building, or running electrical wire, he is bringing order to the material world. Order is part of beauty. By making things that are beautiful and which have practical use to others, one has the satisfaction of seeing one’s ideas take shape in a physical work. Furthermore, one has the ability to earn a living through the work of one’s hands.
God created us to seek, know, and love Him. We believe, teach, and share the real joy of being Catholic Christians that is found through prayer, liturgy, and living out God’s law of love through practicing a moral life. No education can be a true one unless it directs the mind and soul first to God. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, then all these things will be given unto you,” commands our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Kateri College’s mission is to offer young men and women an affordable, four-year, Roman Catholic education that unites the traditional Liberal Arts with a Practical Trade skill. The marriage of the liberal arts and the vocational trades allows for the full flourishing of one’s humanity.
Kateri College believes that a Liberal Arts curriculum focusing on the best that Western Civilization offers is essential for forming the intellect. We hold equally that the Practical Arts ground a person in material reality. Intellectual and practical skills should be united because a person naturally envisions with the mind and then shapes that idea with the hands.
Kateri College’s unique curriculum forms its students to think, analyze, communicate, and work competently. Our graduates will be ready to enter into the adult world without burdensome financial debt and to understand that God has created them for “some definite service for which He has not created another.”
John and Helen Freeh, founders of Kateri College, have worked in academia for the past 30 years. They see the need for a completely new approach to higher education that takes into account the whole person — mind, body, and soul — and our present economic circumstances. They recognize that our institutions of higher learning are broken and are failing our young people in education, in the faith, in financial freedom. Reform may not be possible. Thus, the foundation of a new Catholic college: Kateri College of the Liberal and Practical Arts.
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