Young Catholic Leaders Initiative
The Collegium Institute’s Young Catholic Leaders Initiative is dedicated to cultivating, through the resources of the Catholic intellectual tradition, student leaders in the greater Philadelphia area who are at the service of the common good. This project aims to enhance Collegium’s ongoing Catholic Humanism sequence for college students by extending it to advanced high school students.
The Young Catholic Leaders Initiative was founded in 2020 through a generous grant from the Connelly Foundation. Through a series of academic conferences hosted at the University of Pennsylvania, the Young Catholic Leaders Initiative seeks principally to impart to Catholic students an awareness of the riches of their own faith’s deep intellectual tradition beyond basic catechesis, as well as an awareness of a vibrant academic community, Catholic and non-Catholic, that take that intellectual tradition seriously, such that they will be inspired to recommit themselves to faith in their college pursuits and incorporate their faith into every aspect of their life and leadership. Secondarily, it aims to expose non-Catholics to the resources of the Catholic intellectual tradition, bringing those resources to bear on universal human questions about the meaning and purpose of life, the nature of love, and the origins of the cosmos.
News & Upcoming Events
YCLI Summer Seminar
The Undiscovered Country:
On Life After Death
Apply now for The Undiscovered Country: Life after Death, an in-person summer seminar for the Collegium Institute's Young Catholic Leaders Initiative for advanced high school students from Monday, June 24 to Wednesday, June 26, 2024. This workshop will take place primarily at the University of Pennsylvania's Newman Center.
Priority Application Deadline: February 26
Regular Application Deadline: April 5
Click the button below to learn more and to apply.
Young Catholic Leaders Initiative Awarded Major Grant from the Ambassador's Fund for Catholic Education!
Collegium Institute is proud to announce that the Young Catholic Leaders Initiative has been awarded a major grant from the Ambassador's Fund for Catholic Education for $63,125 for the 2023-24 academic year.
The Ambassador’s Fund for Catholic Education, formerly called the Archdiocesan Educational Fund, was created and funded in 1967 by Matthew H. McCloskey, Jr. (1893-1973), building contractor and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland (1962-64), to advance Catholic education and evangelization through the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
With the support of the Ambassador's Fund, Collegium Institute's Young Catholic Leaders Initiative will be able to significantly expand its program offerings for Philadelphia-area high school students.
In addition to its biannual high school workshops and three-day summer seminar, the Young Catholic Leaders Initiative will now offer a seven-session monthly series on the cardinal and theological virtues, for a select group of Student Ambassadors, who will grapple with the great questions about the struggle between good and evil in their own lives.
This new grant will also enable the Young Catholic Leaders Initiative to offer two workshops and one summer seminar for high school teachers for professional development credit.
Interested high school teachers are invited to fill out the form below to stay updated on these programs.
Past Events
All Shall Be Well: On Hope
Join Collegium Institute’s Young Catholic Leaders Initiative for this sixth session of Seven Secrets to Happiness: Living and Learning the Virtues. Guided by the philosophical and theological insights of St. Augustine, Josef Pieper, and Gabriel Marcel, we will look to poetic and artistic depictions of the virtue of hope to help us explore questions such as, what distinguishes the theological virtue of hope from faith and love, on the one hand, and from natural hope, on the other? How can hope help us reconcile the unconditional certitude of faith with the unavoidable uncertainty of the status viatoris? For what may I hope? Why ought I hope? How is Christ the fulfillment of our hope?
Click the button below to learn more.
A Leap of Faith: On Faith
In A Leap of Faith, the fifth of seven seminars on 7 Secrets to Happiness: Living and Learning the Virtues, we will explore how artists, philosophers, and theologians have depicted faith, and discuss how we can apply these ideas to our lives. Following our discussion, we will have time to take this "leap" ourselves as we attend an indoor trampoline park.
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Balance the Tragedies and Comedies in Your Life: On Temperance
For our fourth of seven seminars on 7 Secrets to Happiness: Living and Learning the Virtues, we will delve into poetry, theater, art, philosophy, and theology surrounding the cardinal virtue of temperance and discuss the practical application of this virtue. Considering the theme of Balance the Tragedies and Comedies in Your Life: On Temperance, we will hopefully exercise some balance during an outing to City Hall's ice skating rink.
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Courage, Dear Heart: On Fortitude
For Courage, Dear Heart: On Fortitude, the third of seven seminars on 7 Secrets to Happiness: Living and Learning the Virtues, we will explore what art, poetry, literature, theology, and philosophy have to say about courage, and discuss how we can apply these ideas to our lives. We will also provide students with an opportunity to exercise the virtue of fortitude through a rousing round of paintball.
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Choosing Your Path: On Prudence
This second session of our seven-session monthly Student Ambassadors program featured a rock-climbing session and luncheon seminar on the virtue of prudence, guided by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Plutarch, and Shakespeare.
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The Just Man Justices: A Seminar and Service Project
This first session of our new Student Ambassadors program, The Just Man Justices: A Seminar and Service Project, took place on Wednesday, August 23rd at the Penn Newman Center. This event marks the beginning of our seven-session monthly Student Ambassadors program on Living and Learning the Virtues, where students will learn about living the virtues cardinal and theological virtues through museum visits and hikes, service projects and feasts.
Click the button below to learn more.
How to Be Happy: Leisure, Festivity, Art, and Contemplation
Happiness is the first and foremost question of the classical tradition of philosophy. How have Catholic thinkers engaged with that tradition and developed a robust answer for life? Join the Collegium Institute’s Young Catholic Leaders Initiative for a three day summer seminar on How to Be Happy: Leisure, Festivity, Culture, and Contemplation in University City from June 26 to June 28 as we explore this question through seminars and panel discussions, music and exhibits, communal service and feasting. Our guides in the quest for happiness include Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Annie Dillard and Josef Pieper.
Taking the seminal text Leisure: The Basis of Culture as our starting point, we will seek to establish a proper conception of work balanced by leisure as both concept and practice. We will then consider how art, the greatest fruit of leisure, moves us from reflection on the things of this world to the next by means of beauty. Lastly, we will focus on the final end of human beings, the purpose of life, namely happiness and contemplation in communion with God.
As part of Collegium Institute’s Magi Project, this event was made possible through the support of ‘In Lumine: Supporting the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on Campuses Nationwide’ (Grant ID 62398 - Integrating Science and Faith at Catholic High Schools Nationwide Phase III) from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in any publications, videos, lectures, etc. associated with this project are those of the author(s) or speaker(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
The St. Albert Initiative is a half-day program on science and faith for Catholic high school students, teachers, and parents as well as interested members of the general public (high school age and above). It featured short talks by Catholic scientists and the opportunity to meet, eat with, and ask questions of Catholic scientists in many fields and at various stages of their careers.
This initiative is named after St. Albert the Great, bishop, scientist, philosopher, theologian, teacher, and patron saint of natural science and scientists.
The St. Albert Initiative is sponsored by the Science and Religion Initiative of the McGrath Institute for Church Life, the Society of Catholic Scientists (SCS), and the Collegium Institute, with funding by grants from The John Templeton Foundation.
This event took place at St. Joseph's Preparatory School on Saturday, March 25, 2023, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (Light breakfast and sign-in at 9 a.m. Events start at 9:45 a.m.)
Click the button below to learn more about this event.
St. Albert Initiative: Modern Science & Catholic Faith
“Dear young people, let yourselves be taken over by the light of Christ, and spread that light wherever you are.”
— St. Pope John Paul II