The academic program at New Saint Andrews College provides a classical liberal arts curriculum from a reformational Christian perspective through orienting lectures, demanding readings, and personal interaction with faculty every week—all in the context of a local Christian community that encourages and holds students accountable to personal, cultural, and spiritual maturity.
I. Curriculum
The Christian worldview is central in every course at New Saint Andrews College. A foundation for this outlook is purposefully set in the first-year Lordship Colloquium, which introduces the worldview of historic, creedal Protestantism. Lordship is followed in the second year by biblical, historic, and systematic theology in the Principia Theologiae Colloquium. Because of their central place in the College’s program, these year-long colloquia are assigned twice the credit as others.
First-year students are introduced to traditional liberal studies in the Classical Rhetoric Colloquium. This is a theoretical and practical course in persuasive oratory, written composition, and logic in which students cultivate habits of thought and expression from which they will draw in all later coursework. First-year students also encounter mathematics and science in the Natural Philosophy Colloquium. In this colloquium, students practice the deductive and empirical disciplines that have always been important to Western cultural vitality.
The Music Colloquium holds an important place in the New Saint Andrews curriculum, where beauty is approached in a disciplined fashion. Christian approaches to aesthetics are presented which can apply to any of the fine arts, but since every Christian is called to sing, choral music is the focus of this colloquium.
After completing their first year, students not only continue their theological studies in Principia Theologiae, they also receive a systematic introduction to the Western heritage in the Classical Culture and History Colloquium. Here students encounter the West, from Near-Eastern antecedents up through modern times, mainly by way of the historian’s apparatus, though literary and artistic approaches are introduced as well. Classical Culture and History lays a broad cultural context and an academic foundation for the rigorous work that is to come. Students are thus equipped to interact with the seminal texts of Western culture that are the hallmark of the third- and fourth-year Traditio Occidentis Colloquia. These two colloquia are organized chronologically, with third-year students studying Greek, Roman, and western-Medieval texts, and fourth-year students studying modern texts. These colloquia also draw out themes in Literature, Philosophy, Law and Politics, Art, and Architecture.
New Saint Andrews requires four years of language study of all students. We emphasize language study because it is through language that cultures shape and express their ideas and passions. The College understands that language study is needed not only to cipher texts and discover English word origins, but more importantly, to push students toward a broad and nuanced handling of all forms of thought and expression. In keeping with the time-proven liberal arts curriculum, we hold the classical languages to be particularly important. Because Greek and Latin are the formative languages of Western Christendom, all New Saint Andrews students are required to learn Greek and Latin to at least an intermediate level of proficiency—that is, at least six terms (one-and-a-half years) in each language.
Third- and fourth-year students are presented with a number of options for focused study in Electives in Culture. These term-length courses approach various topics in history, philosophy, literature, or theology through close interaction with primary texts. Here students hone their faculties of inquiry and creative reasoning by looking carefully at a particular matter of study.
A Senior Thesis is required of all candidates for the Bachelor’s degree, and is the culmination of a student’s work at New Saint Andrews. Third-year students prepare for this major project in the Research Seminar course, where they hone their proficiency in research methods and develop their project proposals. When a proposal is approved, the student will be assigned to a faculty committee with a faculty chair who guides and oversees their project work.
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II. Pedagogy
Important to the College is not merely what is taught, but how it is taught. Biblically, education is a personal, communal and covenantal act of spiritual nurturing (cf. Eph. 6:4, Deut. 6:4ff.). If we separated facts and ideas from real people, people who live in a real community, we would at best impart an education that is flawed. The expression of truth, beauty, and goodness to students requires a present, sensual, vocal, authoritative body—a real live person. In this we follow the medievals, who believed that a teacher’s personal virtue is required to embody the concepts being studied. This is why they described their “curriculum” as manners and letters. Important to the New Saint Andrews program, therefore, is the close personal interaction among students and between students and faculty.
For this reason, all cultural colloquia use weekly Recitations in which a few students gather with the instructor for the purpose of discussing the readings and other course materials or Declamations in which students make oral presentations before the faculty and peers. Another important setting for personal interaction between faculty and students is the Oral Examination in which students meet with their instructors to field their questions at the conclusion of each academic term. A third occasion for close mentoring between teacher and student occurs in the Senior Thesis in which fourth-year students undertake a project that is overseen by a faculty committee, and personally mentored through regular contact with a committee chair. The project concludes with a public presentation and defense before the committee. A fourth venue for personal, collegial interaction at New Saint Andrews is the weekly Disputatio, a gathering of the entire faculty and student body in a forum of public presentation and discussion. Recitations, Declamations, Oral Examinations, Senior Theses, and Disputatio are important elements in the personal, interactive character of the New Saint Andrews education.
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III. Community
The pedagogy described above could not be truly effective by itself; it must take place within the context of a supportive Christian community. Thus, the work of New Saint Andrews College relies heavily upon its organic relationship to Christ Church, its founding body, and to the whole community of Christians in Moscow, for this whole community is needed to encourage godly living and to regulate the many facets of life that are relevant to education. Such a core community also provides students with a sense of cultural identity. Such a home identity is important to them as they interact with the broader secular community in the area, which we encourage, and especially with the local academic communities of Washington State University and the University of Idaho. New St. Andrews College discourages academic and social isolation.
To avoid separating academic pursuits from other areas of life, a tendency that is common in the unreal “ivory tower” culture of many colleges, New Saint Andrews encourages its students to live and to work as responsible members of the local community. For this reason, New Saint Andrews offers no on-campus housing. We encourage our students to patronize local businesses and to seek out living or job situations where they can function alongside the homemakers, professionals, young children, and the elderly of our community.
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IV. Basic Four-Year Summary for Baccalaureate Degree in Liberal Arts and Culture
V. Basic Two-Year Summary for Associate of Arts Degree in Liberal Arts and Culture
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Application Information
Applications Requirements and Guidelines
For more information on NSA degrees, visit the "Degrees & Requirements" page.
For a statement on Distance Education, click here.
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Return to Academics
The New Saint Andrews College Program of Studies