(RNS) — In September, 15 students began online classes at a new university in California being billed as a place “where your faith meets your STEM career.” And not just any STEM career. Jennifer Nolan, the co-founder and president of Catholic Polytechnic University, hopes the school will one day be known as a “Catholic MIT” or “Catholic Caltech.”
Nolan, a homeschooling mom and neuroscientist, couldn’t find a tech school where she could be sure her kids wouldn’t be “talked out of their faith,” she said. So she started her own, helped by a donor who has allowed the school to offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees currently free of tuition. It will also send students away with a deepened sense of Catholic identity and practice, as all faculty are practicing Catholics and will weave faith, ethics and virtue into their coursework, Nolan said.
“I think in this day and age people who choose to be Catholic — like all of these Catholic converts that are on the rise among the youth — they want something that is truly aligned with the teachings of the magisterium,” Nolan said, identifying potential students as rosary-carrying daily Massgoers who practice perpetual adoration and who “really want to live their faith.”
An educational niche aimed at conservative Catholics seems to be a succ …