Dr. Scott Cairns was in residence at Saint Katherine College during the spring 2012 semester.  In addition to teaching a semester-long course entitled “Writing the Spiritual Journey”, Dr. Cairns offered two public lectures at the Monday evening Saint Katherine College Forum and led a Writers’ Retreat/Seminar “Writing the Road Travelled”  at the college. 

As the spring 2012 semester was concluding, Dr. Cairns was asked to reflect upon his experiences at Saint Katherine College and expectations and hope for its future.

Dr. Cairns, now that you have been in residence at Saint Katherine College for a semester, how would you describe its culture and atmosphere?

I’d say that both are developing. The college culture is a work-in-progress, bringing together Orthodox students and faculty (as well as some very devout non-Orthodox) with a gracious will to discover the deep and sustaining Tradition that lies at the heart of our various traditions. The atmosphere is one of quiet determination, of diligence coupled with a somewhat subdued sense of exhilaration at the prospect of the profound vision being realized here.

Has there been a particular time or moment during your stay that has left a lasting impression?

 Not so much a single moment, but a compelling sense of community and common purpose. 

 What has surprised you the most in your experiences with the students, faculty, or the community surrounding Saint Katherine?

 The students are delightful, if necessarily young and—perhaps for that reason—not uniformly aware of the amazing gift, the uncommon opportunities being offered them here. I have a sense that some are squandering these opportunities for high caliber, individualized study with nationally engaged faculty, perhaps because they imagine they would have the same opportunities in a larger college or university.  I hope they figure it out.  The faculty and the staff, as I’ve suggested, are quite remarkable for their level of accomplishment and for the degree to which they have committed their careers—their lives—to assuring the successful establishment of Saint Katherine College.

One of the most extraordinary developments so far in the life of Saint Katherine has been the early establishment of our excellent literary journal, something many institutions do not have until many years after their founding.  How do you see the role of the Saint Katherine Review as part of the ethos of the College?  What are your hopes for its future?

 The journal manifests the underlying premise of Saint Katherine College: that anything worth doing is worth doing well, worth doing exceedingly well. The literary work—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, translations, etc.—appearing in our journal is not uniform, but it is unified in being well worked in terms of both matter and shape, content and form.  As our beloved Dostoevsky observed, “beauty will save the world”; Saint Katherine College, in general, and Saint Katherine Review, in particular, is the objective correlative of that belief, the sense that shapely, pleasing, soul-opening works of art have a redemptive effect, one that is discovered by author and reader alike.

If the College could be given one important gift immediately, what would you choose? 

President Papatheofanis has spoken about a remarkable plan he has for establishing Named Endowed Chairs in a variety of academic fields in both the arts and sciences. He envisions bringing in nationally prominent faculty by means of these Chairs—which would be funded as a kind of hybrid, pairing significant contributions (received in annual installments) with college operating funds. I have a keen sense that the prominent faculty placed in such Named Chairs would attract many high caliber students. These students and their uncommon experience—essentially receiving a graduate school experience during their undergraduate education—could be expected to bring great honor to themselves and to their alma mater, Saint Katherine College. This is his vision. I also see it; I feel it. May it be blessed.

What advice or encouragement might you give to prospective students and their families?

 I would suggest that they seek to glimpse the estimable advantage that a young man or woman would find in having been educated in seminar settings with nationally prominent faculty, and the advantage of having been treated as what I would call a “colleague-in-the-making,” rather than as a client or consumer or simply as one of several hundred or several thousand undergraduates. What Saint Katherine College offers is, essentially, a classical education with exhilarating contemporary implications, and it is precisely the sort of education that I wish I had been offered as an undergraduate. 

____________________

Dr. Scott Cairns is Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair in English at the  University of Missouri.  He has taught at numerous universities including University of North Texas, and Old Dominion University and was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2006. Dr. Cairn’s nine books include poetry collections,  spiritual memoir, essays, and translations.  His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Image, Spiritus, and Tiferet, and have been anthologized in Upholding Mystery (Oxford UP ’96), Best Spiritual Writing (Harper Collins ’98 and ’00), and Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin, ‘04, ’05, and ’06).  He serves as a  reader/psalti at Saint Luke the Evangelist Greek Orthodox Church in  Columbia, Missouri.  Dr. Cairns is also the editor of the Saint Katherine Review, the sixth issue of which was released in April 2012.

Read more about the Pushcart Prize here. 

Subscribe to the Saint Katherine Review, or order a back issue.

Beginning February 1st 2011 the College’s Adult Degree Completion Program (ADCP) begins offering courses at the campus located at 681 Encinitas Blvd. Encinitas, CA. As a community benefit any adult or college student may audit these courses at no charge.

Click here to download the registration form.

The semester-long courses (15 weeks) award 3 semester unit credits toward a College degree. The first courses offered are:

Bi 7 The Biology of Aging

Human aging is associated with a wide range of physiological changes that not only make us more susceptible to death but also limit our normal functions and render us more susceptible to a number of diseases. We will examine the demographics of aging, biological theories of aging, aging of biological systems, and aging accelerators and decelerators. We will specifically focus on the mechanistic, molecular underpinnings of recent research on aging and discuss what is essential and unique to human aging. 3 semester units. No prerequisites. (Instructor: Papatheofanis; Thursdays, 5-8 PM; February 3-May 19, 2011).

Th 1a   Foundations of Orthodox Theology

This course is the first semester of a year-long survey introduction to Orthodox Theology.  It will provide a foundational understanding of the Orthodox Christian view of God and truth as pursued through contemplation, philosophy, history, and the arts and sciences.  Focus will be placed on the early Church and the apostolic and patristic witness to God and truth, especially considering the sources and method of Orthodox theology.  Key topics will include Orthodox Christian views of the knowability of God, scripture and revelation, the created universe, the Fall, salvation, the Church, liturgy and worship, the testimony of the Saints and the theology of the Holy Images, or Icons.  This course will also touch upon comparative views of these and other issues, to help the student situate Orthodox Christianity in its contemporary religious context.  A variety of learning methods will be employed including lectures, film and other visual presentations, readings in primary and secondary sources, church excursions, class discussion, papers and quizes.  Grading and assignments will follow two tracks:  one for Theology majors and one for non-Theology majors.  3 semester units.  No prerequisites.  (Instructor: Tibbs; Tuesdays, 5:30-8:30 PM from February 1 May 17, 2011.)  Click here for Expanded Course Description

To enroll contact our office at: 760.943.1107, or bring your registration form to the first class meeting.

Have you been homeschooled? There are many ways to receive a quality education and homeschooling is a viable alternative for many families.  Our classes give students direct access to outstanding faculty in small classroom sizes. There are plenty of opportunities for 1:1 learning and mentoring.
Read more…

During the past dozen years or so, I have developed a healthy taste for ambiguity.

One of the reasons I enjoy poetry, for instance, is how a good poem pretty much insists that the reader learn to savor the swoon of ambiguity.  The productive ambiguity of good poems obliges the reader actually to participate with the text, that she collaborate as a co-maker of meaning.

That is to say, a great poem—even a pretty good one—isn’t ever done saying what it has to say, so long as successive generations of alert and energetic readers continue to pick it up.

Ambiguity in any substantial literary text, then, indicates that the significance of the telling doesn’t end with a single reading, and delivers a compelling nudge to the reader that she assist in the telling and the re-telling, the continuing labor of meaning-making.

I also have come to think that this goes for ambiguity in general, ambiguity in life.

And might serve as well for all flavors of uncertainty.

And for perplexity, to boot.

And it occurs to me that perplexity is not such a bad disposition to cultivate, considering the complex circumstances of our lives.  Perplexity is, at the very least, preferable to an array of clear, comprehensible, and mistaken certainties.

Confessing our uncertainties in the face of complex circumstances may prove finally to be a very good thing, even something of a gift.  They bring us face to face with the limit where human understanding fails—as it inevitably must do.   Apprehending that limit serves to make a healthy dent in our pride and sense of self-sufficiency.

Moreover, our noticing that limit of knowledge—that line across which we can never proceed—can nudge us into suspecting how the actual, the True, is immeasurably immense, how it necessarily exceeds us.

I love how W.H. Auden begins his wonderful poem, “Archaeology”:

The archaeologist’s spade

delves into dwellings

vacancied long ago,

unearthing evidence

of life-ways no one

would dream of leading now—

concerning which he has not much

to say that he can prove:—

the lucky man!

Knowledge may have its purposes,

but guessing is always

more fun than knowing. …

I have a very keen sense that our Mr. Auden—prince among poets—also had developed a very healthy taste for ambiguity.

Whatever the Truth turns out to be, it is not a comprehensible body of knowledge, even if that Truth is made manifest—is revealed—in the apprehensible Body of Christ.  We do not—will not ever—comprehend the Truth; rather, the Truth, presumably, comprehends us.

Scott Cairns is Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair in English at the University of Missouri.  His nine books include poetry collections, spiritual memoir, essays, and translations.  He serves as a reader/psalti at Saint Luke the Evangelist Greek Orthodox Church in Columbia, Missouri, and will serve as Visiting Professor of English at Saint Katherine College in spring, 2012.

With New Increase, Cal State Tuition to Be 60% Higher Than in 2008

November 10, 2010, 3:20 pm

California State University will raise its tuition by 15 percent by the 2011-12 academic year despite receiving a healthy increase in state support last month. The system’s Board of Trustees approved the increase today after officials said it would be necessary to raise enrollment and prepare for continuing state budget deficits in the future. With the move, tuition at Cal State will be 60 percent higher next year than it was just two years ago.

The higher education crisis in California continues to mount. Especially for transfer students, those with AA degrees or some college credits, this means fewer options for earning a BA/BS degree. This issue was recently highlighted in an article in The Southwestern College Sun, “It is getting hard to find a slot at SDSU and community colleges across the region are calling for a more trans­parent enrollment process at the state’s most impacted university. The university turned away a record 500 Southwestern College students and 2,500 transfer students from across the county. This year there were 61,800 applicants com­peting for 6,158 slots at SDSU.”

St Katherine College is committed to serving the educational needs of San Diego County, and we welcome transfer applicants.

Are you having problems transferring credits and completing your education?