about hildegard college

We’ve reimagined college around immersive engagement with ideas and culture.

Hildegard combines the old and the new in a unique college experience. We’re renewing the traditional liberal arts through the core curriculum in Foundations of Thought, where students experience one of the most robust Great Works programs in the nation. And we’re also updating what it looks like to study business, leadership, and culture through the entrepreneurship Incubation Lab, where students learn the essentials of economics, product design, organizational development, communication, strategy, and cultural change through hands-on, real-world application.

Students call themselves ‘Hildegardians.’ They’re a tight-knit community of seekers and creators who encourage and motivate one another. Rather than impersonal lectures and fill-in-the-blank tests, Hildegardians learn in small cohorts that allow them to take ownership of their education. And as a member of the earliest graduating classes of the College, they have the opportunity to make their mark on the community by establishing traditions, championing Opportunities for Redemptive Innovation in the Incubation Lab, and creating new connections with industry partners.

Our Values

Our academic programs are built on the conviction that we are rational and creative beings, designed in the image of own Creator who has instilled in us the capacities needed to know what is true, to judge what is good, and to make beautiful things.

At heart, the identity of a Christian institution of learning resides in the acknowledgment of a highest good that orders all moral actions, including those of teaching, learning, and venture building. Hildegard College recognizes union with God the creator as the highest good. Such union is safeguarded and advanced by the church and attained by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and it is practiced through love of God and of one’s neighbor. Hildegard College is established with the conviction that an education ordered toward union with God requires maintaining an environment conducive to the exercise of faith, hope, and love.
The aim of Liberal Arts education is freedom of mind and action. Studied as a whole, the Liberal Arts reveal the order of the world across fields of knowledge. Comprehending this unity and order liberates the mind to see enduring truths and to free our actions from mere service to personal gain and temporary reprieve. Liberal education is an orientation of the part to the whole, and it enables the human will to choose to act for the good.
A complete education forms a person through truth, in goodness, and for acts of service. Hildegard College’s motto is Quaerere (to seek), Amare (to love), Aedificare (to create). We view education as formation in a threefold process. Students discover through seeking knowledge of those things that ought to be sought after and loved. Through habit and virtue, they become the kinds of people who desire and seek to further those things that are worthy of our love. And they acquire the practical knowledge and experience required to pursue those things that they love in acts of redemptive creation.

One person cannot learn on behalf of another but is done for oneself. True understanding occurs in discovery, synthesis, and recreation. Hildegard College rejects indoctrination as a teaching method, and it upholds student-driven conversation as the most conducive to authentic learning. Moreover, it is essential that students approach academic conversation with intellectual freedom, without fear of academic or social repercussions. Members of the Hildegard community likewise renounce censorship, both ideological and social. Instead, Hildegard upraises respect, charity, and honesty in the classroom and rejects discrimination of individuals because of race, religion, ability, sex, or social class.
To maintain its commitment to the formation of students in faith, virtue, and extraordinary work, and to preserve the conditions of non-discrimination and free inquiry conducive to this mission, Hildegard College values its independence from the federal government or any coercive institution. Hildegard College does not accept federally funded loans and grants.
Hildegard College recognizes a historical and orthodox Christian faith, including the definitive doctrines the Holy Trinity; the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus; original sin; human dependence on divine grace for salvation; and the life of the world to come. As an ecumenical Christian college, we are unaffiliated with any specific tradition or denomination within Christian orthodoxy. And as an organization that exists to teach and form students in the knowledge and love of the truth, and recognizing that students join our community from a variety of faith traditions, we choose not to compose an organizational faith statement but instead refer to the traditional creeds of the church.

Who is Hildegard?

Hildegard of Bingen was one of history’s most impressive people. She lived in the 12th Century and was a polymath — a student and practitioner of many disciplines. Hildegard wrote musical compositions, made medicine, wrote philosophy and theology, and created plays. Hildegard is our namesake because she represents the power of interdisciplinary study, of bringing together all areas of knowledge, arts, and social engagement in service to her community.

Our People

The Hildegard team consists of world-class academics and visionary entrepreneurs, coming together to create a one-of-a-kind community of learning and creating.

faculty

leadership

Matthew J. Smith, Ph.D.

President; Tutor, Foundations of Thought

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Jeffrey L. Tanner, M.Ed.

Dean of Entrepreneurship; VP of Operations

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Christy Mathews, Ph.D.

Dean of Enrollment and Student Services

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Blythe Hill, M.A.

Director, Incubation Lab

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