Welcome to the School of Arts and Sciences, home to a large part of the liberal education that students receive at The Catholic University of America.  The “enduring questions” that define our general education curriculum are the same ones that drive the work of our seventeen departments and related programs.  We are interested in probing the mysteries of the universe as well as the mystery of every person within it. The beauty of the remotest regions and of the smallest particles occupy us as much as the truth about history and the future toward which our society is moving.  We are convinced that it is only those who have taken the time to contemplate reality as a whole that will be able to find their rightful place within it. In seeing the true, the good, and the beautiful, we become better able to draw them into the shared reality of our lives.  By becoming better persons we can build a better world. A liberal education is a spiritual journey that culminates in the recognition that its source lies, not in us, but in the Creator who gives every good gift from above. Within that realization we see that even the work on which we have been engaged has never really been ours, but only our acceptance of the invitation held out to us. From the very beginning it has been a gift that, as the poet Seamus Heaney declared, was able to “catch the heart off guard and blow it open.”  

David Walsh

Professor of Politics

Interim Dean of Arts and Sciences