Southeast Missouri State University students and adult learners will soon have the chance to pursue Catholic education for college credit.

The Aquinas Institute for Catholic Studies will be the first of its kind in Southeast Missouri, according to Deacon Tom Schumer, director of the Newman Center at Southeast. For a price point that will be “much the same” as what credits cost through Southeast, Schumer said students will have access to courses in the Catholic theological tradition.

Courses in the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Studies will be offered through a partnership the Newman Center will have with an accredited Catholic university, Schumer said, noting he was not yet at liberty to disclose the name of the school.

The Newman Center at 512 N. Pacific St., as well as two other buildings belonging to the Catholic Campus Ministry, will soon be demolished to make way for an 18,000-square-foot building, which will be known as the St. John Henry Newman Center. The new center will house classrooms for use by the institute and will be led by a familiar face.

Southeast alumnus Gideon Barr, class of 2014, will return to campus in the fall as the director of the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Studies. Barr is earning a doctoral degree in moral theology from Ave Maria University, a private Catholic institution in Ave Maria, Florida.

There’s an “often unnoticed” crisis in Catholic higher education, Barr said. Because of demographic shifts, whether they be cultural, geographic or financial, he said Catholic students don’t go to Catholic colleges anymore.

“We just want to make available to them the tradition that is their own, sort of by birthright, once again,” he said.

In 2013, Barr was a senior and president of a student leadership council at the Newman Center when Schumer became director. The two connected immediately, Schumer said, and have stayed close since Barr graduated from Southeast.

But when Barr first came to the Catholic Campus Ministry, he was new to the Catholic tradition.

“I didn’t grow up Catholic,” Barr said. “There wasn’t an institute at the time but Father Patrick (Nwokoye), the then-chaplain, invited me into a book study ... so for me, that was that point of exposure to the Catholic tradition, and a welcome one.”

The Newman Center is a place where students can find that first point of exposure with Catholicism, be it through Mass, Bible studies, social events, retreats or mission trips. But until the idea for the institute was born, there wasn’t a good way for Newman Center leaders to educate students after that initial encounter.

“Students have an encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. Their very next question is, ‘OK, I feel something. Is it true?’” Schumer said. “That quest for the truth is what we’re really here for.” The Aquinas Institute for Catholic Studies will allow faith leaders at the Newman Center to dive deeper with students into theology.

“It’s all about serving individual souls in their pursuit of truth about the person of Jesus Christ and his Church,” Schumer said.

The new center will be named for St. John Henry Newman, who Schumer said was a proponent of higher learning at the university level.

“Newman and Aquinas are two of the great minds in the Catholic theological tradition,” Schumer said. “And to have those two patron saints coming together in this process of offering expanded and very much needed ministry to our students and to our community is just an incredible blessing.”

Schumer said the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Studies has the blessing from Bishop Edward M. Rice of the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau. “Bishop Rice has heard about this and has embraced it as something that he really wants for the diocese,” he said.

In addition to support from the bishop, Schumer said he and Barr have talked with community leaders to help get the word out about the institute.

“It’s happening,” Schumer said of the institute. “It’s part of the plan.”

Schumer said the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Studies should be open by the fall of 2021. Construction of the St. John Henry Newman Center is projected for completion by late spring of that year.

Find more information about the Catholic Campus Ministry at www.semocatholic.org.