WCC, Southern Nebraska Register
Bishop James Conley has joined the board of directors for Wyoming Catholic College (WCC) in Lander, Wy.
The bishop has served as an advisor of the institution since even before it opened.
“From the very beginning of the College’s existence,” the bishop said, “I have been convinced that God has called Wyoming Catholic to play a profound role in our society and in our Church. I am grateful for the opportunity to join her board, and to lend myself even more passionately to the growth and success of such a vital institution.”
Founded in 2005, WCC forms students through a rigorous immersion in the primary sources of the classical liberal arts tradition, the grandeur of the mountain wilderness, and the spiritual heritage of the Catholic Church. Incoming students are required to make a three-week wilderness trek before academics begin.
President Kyle Washut said he was deeply thankful for the bishop’s acceptance of the position.
“There are few people who better understand and love Wyoming Catholic College,” he said. “I look forward to drawing upon his wealth of experience, particularly his own personal experience with the thoughts and writings of John Senior, who has had such an important influence on Wyoming Catholic College. Welcome, Bishop!”
WCC offers a unique Great Books curriculum, coupled with the Catholic tradition. The Great Books curriculum is similar to the one Bishop Conley experienced as a student himself. While in college, he studied in the University of Kansas’s Integrated Humanities Program, a well-known classical great books program. During his junior year, he converted to the Catholic Church. His mentor and teacher in the Integrated Humanities Program, Professor John Senior, was his godfather.
The WCC board chairman, Bill Sniffin, echoed President Washut’s sentiments.
“I think Bishop Conley’s addition to our board is just tremendous,” he said. “As another supporter who has watched this wonderful college—‘Our Lady’s College,’ as we like to call her—grow from the most unassuming of seeds, I know how important it is to truly love what we’re trying to accomplish here in Lander, and to have a clear vision of just how great an impact this place will have. It’s a great blessing for us to be joined on the board by such a friend of the College, and one who has been here from the very beginning.”
Bishop Conley’s history with WCC is rich and lengthy. He served on the board that was convened in the earliest days of its existence, when the college was little more than an idea. He has visited the college a number of times in the ensuing years, including serving as commencement speaker in May 2014, delivering a speech that was later converted into the college’s inaugural “Integritas” publication.
At that commencement ceremony, the bishop received the College’s Sedes Sapientia Award, given each year in recognition of “a Catholic who has made an outstanding contribution to articulating and defending the Faith in today’s Church.”
In his speech that year, the bishop reminded the Class of 2014 that the education they had received at Wyoming Catholic “has prepared you to direct yourselves to the ends and purposes proper to Christians. The gospel teaches us that the mission of a Christian is to ‘go out to all the world, proclaiming the gospel to everyone!’ …[B]y all the metrics that matter, because of your education and formation at Wyoming Catholic College, each of you is immeasurably rich.”
