Michael Andrews, PhD, Dean
Jodi Olsen Kelly, EdD, Associate Dean
Fr. John F. Foster, S.J., MA, STM,
Executive Assistant to the Dean and Chaplain to the College
Nancy Bush, BA, Program Coordinator for the BAHT
Objectives
Matteo Ricci College seeks to develop students who shape their personal and social futures through responsible choices. The objectives of the program are to continue the harmonious development of students’ cognitive, affective, and evaluative potential; bring students to a reflective consciousness of how they learn; and foster an inquiring, caring community of learners and teachers. Focusing on students’ intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, ethical, and religious lives, the curriculum is designed to sharpen and test generalizable learning skills. Students exercise and develop verbal and non-verbal communication skills; develop specific skills, both in a broad range of traditional disciplines and in areas of specialization; and confront, through interdisciplinary investigation, problems, clarifying themes, and a variety of values. Students are aided in undergoing prescriptive self-assessment.
Matteo Ricci College has always been an “experimental college,” a laboratory for curricular innovation, hence among its objectives is the continuing enterprise of creating new elective courses for the benefit of Seattle University as a whole. A related objective is to keep alive the student-centered pedagogy of the best of Jesuit education through small classes, an integral curriculum, and close attention to individual students.
Although many graduates have gone directly from Matteo Ricci College to promising career placements, humanistic education should be seen as pre-professional, not as terminal, education. Matteo Ricci College, consistent with the mission of Seattle University, seeks to develop first fully human persons who can then take the greatest possible advantage of their subsequent professional training and opportunities. In the specific case of students seeking the bachelor of arts in humanities for teaching, the objective of the college is to educate future teachers who will become inspirations to their own students, exemplars to their peers, and de facto missionaries of the wisdom in learning.
Structure and Special Admissions Requirements
Traditionally, Matteo Ricci College at Seattle University has been the three-year university phase of an innovative program that coordinates and integrates high school and university level studies, enabling students to complete their high school and university education in six or seven years, rather than the traditional eight.
The Matteo Ricci College program was developed jointly by Seattle Preparatory School and Seattle University. That collaboration led, in 1975, to Seattle Prep’s initial offering of the three-year high school phase and, in 1977, to Seattle University’s initial offering of the three-year university phase. Access to Matteo Ricci College at Seattle University was restricted from the inception of the program through the 1988-89 academic year to students who had completed the three-year curriculum at Seattle Prep.
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, initial collaboration between Seattle University and five of the other seven local Catholic high schools led to academic partnerships, termed the Matteo Ricci College Consortium, that opened access to the bachelor of arts in humanities program to graduates of those schools. The focus of these partnerships is a bridge curriculum that is designed jointly by high school and university faculty and taught by the high school faculty on the high school campus. That curriculum can generate five or ten Seattle University credits, which may be applied toward a bachelor of arts in humanities degree or other Seattle University program requirements, or be transferred to other universities.
Beginning with the fall term of the 1989-1990 academic year, admissions to the Matteo Ricci College to study toward a bachelor of arts in humanities became available to the following students:
- Seattle Prep students who have successfully completed the appropriate three-year curriculum there and are recommended for advancement to Matteo Ricci College.
- Graduates of Seattle Prep who follow the three-year curriculum there with successful completion of a fourth year of study on the Prep campus.
- Graduates of Eastside Catholic High School, Forest Ridge School, Archbishop Murphy High School, John F. Kennedy Memorial High School, and O’Dea High School who: 1. meet the university’s entrance requirements; 2. earn a grade of C (2.00) or higher in the jointly developed “bridge curriculum” offered at the high school campuses that generates Seattle University credits; and 3. receive recommendations from teachers involved in the bridge curriculum and from the high school administration.
General Program Requirements (Policy 90-1)
All students are expected to make normal progress toward completing the required courses in sequence. They must maintain a cumulative academic grade point average of 2.00 or higher during the first year of the program and 2.25 during the remainder of the program. Students failing to meet these expectations will be placed on probation for up to two consecutive quarters, and thereafter are subject to dismissal from the College.
Peer advisors, overseen by the associate deans and the college administrator, serve as the principal advisors to all Matteo Ricci College students on academically related matters. No student in the College may register for any Seattle University course without first consulting, and receiving written permission from, a peer advisor or a dean. Students are required to seek additional advising from faculty with disciplinary expertise in the area of specialized studies selected (see Area of Concentration, below). Students who are contemplating studying for two degrees in four years are required to declare the second degree and be assigned an additional advisor from within that faculty as soon as possible.
Bachelor of Arts in Humanities (BAH)
Bachelor of Arts in Humanities for Teaching (BAHT)