(OSV News) — While many resolve in the new year to spend less time on their phones and more time in nature, Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming, makes this a daily reality for its students. Wyoming Catholic College president Kyle Washut, a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in California and the International Theological Institute in Austria, spoke with OSV News’ Charlie Camosy about the current state of Catholic higher education and the impact of the school’s unique approach.
Charlie Camosy: How would you describe the current cultural landscape for young people? How does that landscape affect what they are looking for in higher education?
Kyle Washut: The cultural landscape is a post-Christian one. Those who mark “none” on the Pew survey make up 28% of the total population, the largest single religious group in America. And they’re young, with nearly 70% of them under 50.
In addition to this increasingly non-Christian environment, we are immersed in a culture cut off from the habits of meaningful connection, attention and reflection — habits essential for the proclamation of the Gospel. Addiction to social media and to the artificial world of the internet blocks the formation of community and an understanding of the real. As a result, our culture is disconnected, addicted, fleeing from commitment, and desperate for meaning.
Ted Gioia describes this as “dopamine culture;” a world hooked on quick, shallow dopamine hits. And its effects on higher education are disastrous. Campus life is deeply destructive, with surveys suggesting that 50-70% of Christian students lose their faith by graduation.
The pervasiveness of hook-up culture means that men and women are dramatically delaying marriage and having children far later (if at all). Refusal to recognize the truth or to engage deeply with ideas leaves students longing for meaning, fueling increasingly desperate attempts to “find purpose” in the technocratic, morally impaired world that surrounds them — attempts such as the misguided protests held at so many legacy institutions last fall.
Camosy: How has Catholic higher education in general fared in responding to these signs of our times?
Washut: Not well, sadly. Everywhere we turn, we see campus cultures (and curricula) that reflect the confusion of the society in which we live. There is no clear witness or commitment to the truth; courses promote an understanding of the human person often diametrically opposed to our Catholic beliefs; students suffer from isolation even as campus lifestyles promote promiscuity and drunkenness; teachers at Catholic universities are as likely as their secular counterparts to promote a vision of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), that fosters a sense of victimhood and entitlement. Indeed, most Catholic institutions are exacerbating the problems and challenges facing our young people, rather than addressing them.
There is a tiny cadre of colleges (such as ours) offering remarkably creative solutions to these challenges and problems. These institutions are bright islands of hope in the wreckage of American higher education, but they serve only a miniscule fraction of Catholic students.
Camosy: What does Wyoming Catholic offer that is different?
Washut: Wyoming Catholic College is intentionally countering the “dopamine culture” that dominates our society. We offer an exclusively “in-person” education, asking our students to come away to this beautiful, remote mountain town. We create a culture conducive to authentic learning by asking students to fast from their cell phones for the entirety of their time on campus. And there is no internet in the residence halls.
This technology fast builds what we refer to as “poetic culture.” In addition, our freshmen go on a three-week backpacking trip (led by our seniors) before setting foot in a classroom. This trip is enhanced by a minimum of seven additional weeks of outdoor activities and by a semester of intensive horsemanship training. Along with these experiences in nature, our freshmen spend three mornings each week singing, they memorize a common corpus of 30 poems, undertake one of the most innovative Latin programs in the world, and are plunged into beautiful, vibrant liturgies by our full-time Roman Catholic and Byzantine Catholic chaplaincies.
This immersive culture prepares our students for our world-class Great Books curriculum: a uniquely integrated Humanities program with a focus on spoken and written rhetoric; a systematic, principled approach to the perennial Philosophy; one of the best undergraduate Theology tracks available; and a considered approach to Mathematics and Natural Science that allows our students to reject attempts to put faith and reason in false opposition.
Given the grounded and fertile cultural setting we cultivate here at Wyoming Catholic, our students graduate with both “grit” and “grace” — with a clarity and grandeur of vision that equips them to share the fruits of their education with others and prepares them to persevere in the face of the challenges they will surely meet.
Camosy: Does dropping the smartphone really work? I mean, does it really work?
Washut: Yes! When our students discuss their experience of the technology fast, the first benefit they mention is the community: the lunch room in Frassati Hall is abuzz with conversation, not a screen in sight. Students develop deep friendships, rooted in genuine, shared experiences and a rich communal life — doubtless contributing to our extraordinarily high retention rate.
The academic impacts are equally dramatic. Our students read hundreds of pages each week, engaging in 40+ hours (weekly) of in-person conversations about those readings. Our professors report better classroom engagement than they have experienced elsewhere, and boast that our students are better at reading deeply than students habituated to internet skimming.
The quiet provided by the smartphone fast allows our students to be attentive to their own thoughts, and to be present to the spiritual reality of God’s presence.
While I don’t want to oversell the cell phone fast — it doesn’t return us to Eden, but only to the ’90s — we see fewer manifestations of the depression and isolation that plagues education these days. There are still struggles, of course. Our students come to us from a culture that is burdened with real difficulties, and they must work to eliminate that baggage. But the community, the friendships, the academically and spiritually fulfilling lives they live, and the college’s deep commitment to moral behavior and to the truth create the ideal environment in which to work out their struggles.
Camosy: Can you say more, in particular, about the benefits of being outside and encountering God’s creation in meaningful and creative ways? That seems to be a very key part of the resistance to the lives so many young people are trapped in today.
Washut: The term “touch grass” is increasingly prevalent these days — an urgent call for Gen Zers, who consume an average of seven hours of recreational screen time a day, to get outside and experience the real. This phrase recognizes that encountering reality is an essential way to break free of the entanglements that burden today’s young people.
This is hardly a new idea. Historically, God’s chosen place of renewal has always been the wilderness. When we take our students into the backcountry, God begins to heal the four fundamental relationships wounded by sin: our relationship to the natural world, to one another, to our own bodies, and to God.
By experiencing wonder at the beauty of creation, intense community building from working and worshiping together in the natural elements, and growth in virtue and in leadership, our students see that God has called them to discover and live out their unique identity in Him. They have “touched the grass” of some of the remotest, most pristine places in the world. And they have returned with a newfound wisdom and confidence, knowing that they are created and loved, and that they can overcome any obstacle.
Charlie Camosy is professor of medical humanities at the Creighton School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska, and moral theology fellow at St. Joseph Seminary in New York.
