Wyoming Catholic College: An Overview of Its Unique Approach to Education

Wyoming Catholic College (WCC), a private institution rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition, offers a distinctive educational experience in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Located in Lander, Wyoming, it stands as the state's sole Catholic college or university. Founded with a vision to provide a comprehensive liberal arts education, WCC combines a rigorous academic curriculum with an emphasis on outdoor leadership and spiritual formation.

Founding and Vision

The seeds of Wyoming Catholic College were sown in 2003 when David Ricken, then bishop of Wyoming, expressed his desire to establish a Catholic college within the state. Collaborating with Robert Cook, a parish priest from the Diocese of Cheyenne, and Robert Carlson, a Wyoming college professor and former student of John Senior, Bishop Ricken initiated the planning process. Lander, Wyoming, was chosen as the ideal location in 2004 and 2005, and Carlson articulated the college's philosophical vision statement.

Accreditation and Development

Wyoming Catholic College achieved candidacy for accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) in 2014, marking a significant milestone in its development. The college has continued to develop its campus in downtown Lander, Wyoming, a city of about 7,500. Originally, the college planned to build its campus on a donated ranch, but those plans were discarded as financially unfeasible.

Curriculum: A Synthesis of Great Books and Outdoor Leadership

At the heart of Wyoming Catholic College lies a curriculum designed to provide students with a broad liberal arts education through the study of the Great Books. The curriculum has eight tracks: humanities, theology, philosophy, math/science, fine arts, Latin, Trivium and leadership. All students take the same courses.

Complementing the classroom program is the Outdoor Leadership Program (OLP), an experiential component that sets WCC apart. Freshmen embark on a three-week backpacking trip in the Rocky Mountains, an experience the college considers to be "the most unusual and meaningful orientation program in the country". Throughout their four years, students participate in at least two "outdoor weeks," short courses held during spring and fall breaks, focusing on skills such as backpacking, canoeing, canyoneering, fishing, horse packing, ice climbing, mountain biking, mountaineering, rock climbing, skiing, and whitewater rafting and kayaking.

Arbery, a literature scholar, said the outdoor curriculum complements the book-based one. He taught Herman Melville’s Moby Dick earlier this semester with his wife, also a professor at the college. “When we were talking about this, one of the seniors started talking about rock climbing and the way you use ropes,” Arbery recalled. “It’s also a moral training for the students in Aristotle’s sense,” Arbery said of the outdoor program. “You don’t go out and just tell them what’s good and what’s bad, but they have to become more aware of their acts when they’re out in the wilderness, learning to control their hunger, how to ration themselves in terms of energy or food, or how to address their fear. If they’re doing something that is at first terrifying to them such as rock climbing, how do you overcome your fear of heights? All of these things are constantly calling on the resources of the students and helping to give them habits, or what Aristotle talks about are virtues.

Admissions and Student Life

Wyoming Catholic College admitted its first class of 34 students in 2007. The largest class ever accepted was 68 freshman in 2021. Today, it has a student body of about 190. In the spring of 2016, WCC became the second college in the nation to accept the Classic Learning Test (CLT) as an alternative to the SAT and ACT for college admissions.

The college fosters a unique campus environment by prohibiting televisions. The college's famed technology policy includes a ban on smartphones. According to Arbery, the ban on smartphones had to be suspended for the fall semester because problems with landline phone and internet service made it necessary to permit students keep their smartphones in their dorm rooms. “It’s kind of radical,” he said of the policy. “It really works well.

Catholic Identity and Spiritual Life

Wyoming Catholic College is committed to fostering a vibrant Catholic identity. The college offers Catholic liturgies in both the Roman and Byzantine rites, including the Traditional Latin Mass, the Novus Ordo, and the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. In the Spring of 2024, Wyoming Catholic College became the fifth site in the world to have a shrine dedicated to "Mary, Mother of Persecuted Christians." The Icon and shrine were facilitated by Fr.

Nearly all students and about 90 percent of the professors are Catholic. The president and Catholic faculty take the Oath of Fidelity and make the Catholic Profession of Faith. Spiritual life on campus focuses on beautiful liturgy and sacred music, including both the Ordinary and Extraordinary (Latin) Forms of the Mass and the Byzantine Rite. There are no classes during daily Mass and on patronal feast days.

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Wyoming Catholic, like many religious colleges, holds that sexual activity outside the confines of a marriage between a man and a woman contradicts the teachings of the church. “If there were a faculty member who was living out of wedlock with someone, that would be grounds for firing; the students could be expelled if we found out about sexual relations outside marriage -- that’s part of what we understand our Catholic identity to entail,” said Glenn C. Not everyone will share that understanding or that identity. All student residence halls are single-sex with no opposite-sex visitation to private rooms, and there is a nighttime curfew.

Financial Matters and Federal Funding

Wyoming Catholic rejects federal student aid to avoid government restrictions, yet it remains relatively inexpensive while offering a unique and faithful Catholic education in the mountains.

Glenn Arbery said of what the college fears accepting federal funding could open it up to, "It mostly has to do with the sense that there is a kind of agenda in terms of gender identity. Our traditional character is very much geared towards man and woman, heterosexual relations, not much sympathy with the transgender position and things like that. Those are the kinds of issues that come up that we hope to avoid if there should be some pressure from the government for us to do something. There’s every indication that there would be. There’s a lawsuit now against the Little Sisters of the Poor trying to make them offer contraceptives and abortions to employees. That’s ridiculous. The decision not to accept federal funding put Wyoming Catholic in the perhaps unenviable position of acting as a loan servicer, allowing students to pay back their tuition -- tuition, room and board, and other costs of attendance are currently set at $32,300 -- after they graduate. “But you can see what kinds of cash flow position that puts us in,” Arbery said. “We’re having to pay faculty, feed and house the students, and where’s the cash coming from? Arbery said the college has entered into a new arrangement with a credit union that agreed to consolidate Wyoming Catholic's debt and offer student loans to all students who gain acceptance, regardless of their credit scores, starting in the 2020-21 academic year. Loans will be at 5.25 to 6 percent interest rate, slightly higher than the current 4.53 percent rate for federal student loans.

Noteworthy Events

In 2020 Paul McCown, a former Michigan politician and the school's chief financial officer (CFO) of two years, launched the distillery Sweetwater Spirits, which switched to producing hand sanitizer at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2021 he used claims of wealth from this business to secure a $15 million loan from investment firm Ria R Squared, before anonymously donating two-thirds of those funds to the college. McCown also received $2 million in federally backed PPP loans, and was fired by the school in June 2021 when his fraudulent activity was discovered.

Campus Locations

Wyoming Catholic College has a trio of main campus locations within easy walking distance of one another: The Holy Rosary Campus, which includes half of the student residences; All Saints, which includes the remainder of the residences and All Saints Common; and the Downtown Campus, comprised of the historic Baldwin and Augur Buildings, Immaculate Conception Oratory, St. Joseph’s Hall (which houses our COR and OLP programs), and Frassati Hall (our dining hall).

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The historic Baldwin Building houses faculty offices, several classrooms, a large library, and a student lounge, and is conveniently located on Lander’s “Old West” Main Street. A few blocks east, the historic Augur Building provides us with much-needed classroom space, as well as study and common areas. St. Joseph’s Hall, a block north of Baldwin, houses our COR and OLP programs. Frassati Hall, a few blocks north, serves as the College’s dining hall and commons building. The residence halls at Holy Rosary (on the property of Holy Rosary Catholic Church) and those at All Saints (several blocks east of the Downtown Campus) house the majority of our students.

A Unique Niche in Higher Education

Reilly added, "Outside of the whole Catholic question, I think one of the real interesting things about Wyoming Catholic is the niche that it has found. I think that in a market of higher education that’s highly competitive and getting more competitive that institutions finding a particular niche, finding a particular way of defining themselves and standing out from the crowd, is clearly very important. Not only is Wyoming Catholic very strongly Catholic, which certainly stands out, but its location, its emphasis on an outdoors program and developing leadership skills and familiarity with the environment of Wyoming is just something that’s very attractive to a lot of students, and it works very well with the great books program. I think most of them are attracted in some major way to our outdoor program, or to what they perceive as a distinctive difference, which is that we emphasize the poetic imagination much more so than some other colleges do.

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