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Another 6-Year Term for Thomas Aquinas College President

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November 07, 2008 - 3:25 PST

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA ADVISORY

SANTA PAULA, CA (NOVEMBER 7, 2008) - Mrs. Maria O. Grant, Chairman of the Board of Governors at Thomas Aquinas College, announced today that at its meeting on Monday, October 27, the Board of Governors voted unanimously to reappoint Dr. Thomas E. Dillon as President of Thomas Aquinas College for a term of six years, beginning in May of 2009.

"With his firm commitment to the mission and principles of Thomas Aquinas College, Dr. Dillon has introduced this institution to new friends across the country and abroad. He has gained interest and support for the college among the Roman Curia and from many donors who have made possible its strong position today," said Mrs. Grant. She added that the Board of Governors salutes Dr. Dillon's unceasing efforts for the college in the last 18 years as president and looks forward to supporting him in his continuing leadership of Thomas Aquinas College.

ABOUT THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE: Ranked the #5 "Best Value" in the country for 2008 and 2009 among all private institutions in the United States by The Princeton Review, Thomas Aquinas College is a four-year Catholic liberal arts college with a fully-integrated curriculum composed exclusively of the Great Books, the seminal works in the major disciplines by the great thinkers who have helped shape Western civilization. There are no textbooks, no lectures and no electives. Instead, under the guidance of faculty members and using only the Socratic method of dialogue in classes of no more than 20, students read and discuss the original works of authors such as Euclid, Dante, Galileo, Descartes, the American Founding Fathers, Adam Smith, Shakespeare, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine, and of course, St. Thomas Aquinas. Graduates consistently excel in the many world-class institutions at which they pursue graduate degrees in fields such as law, medicine, business, theology and education. They have distinguished themselves serving as lawyers, doctors, business owners, priests, military service men and women, educators, journalists and college presidents.

ABOUT DR. THOMAS E. DILLON: For the past 37 years, Dr. Thomas E. Dillon, the President of Thomas Aquinas College, has worked to advance and sustain Catholic liberal education. Appointed to the College's teaching faculty in 1972, a year after its founding, he served as Assistant Dean for Student Affairs from 1976 to 1981; he then served as Academic Dean from 1981 until his appointment as President in 1991. Dr. Dillon holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Integral Liberal Arts from St. Mary's College of California, and Masters and doctoral degrees in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame.

Widely-recognized as a national leader in the reform of accreditation in higher education, Dr. Dillon was active in the early 1990s in organizing a new national accrediting agency, the American Academy for Liberal Education. In 2003, he was appointed to a three-year term by the United States Secretary of Education to the 15-member National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, a group that, in effect, accredits the accreditors.

In the late 1990s, Dr. Dillon was appointed by the United States Congress to two consecutive three-year terms on the 11-member national Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, an independent committee that advises Congress and the Secretary of Education on the disposition of over $60 billion annually in financial aid.

President Dillon is a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. He serves on the Board of Directors of a number of organizations, including the Institute on Religious Life, and he has been a member of Legatus for the past 11 years. He has spoken to various Legatus chapters around the country and at the Legatus International Summit in Naples, Florida, in 2005. Dr. Dillon has been interviewed about Catholic higher education on a number of nationally-broadcast radio programs and has done television programs on this and related topics, primarily on the internationally-broadcast EWTN.

Dr. Dillon and his wife, Terri, have been married for 41 years and have four children and 15 grandchildren.

Contact

Thomas Aquinas College
http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/news/pressroom/releases/2008/dillon_reappointm
CA, 93060 US
Anne Forsyth - Director of college relations, 805 525-4417

Keywords

President

Category

Catholic Schools & Religious Education

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