Logos is an innovative first-year learning experience that will introduce you to the Assumption community, prepare you for academic success, and encourage you to explore who you are and who you ought to become.

Logos is designed for first-year Assumption students. It aims to help you get the most out of your time at Assumption by encouraging you to discuss and develop characteristics, virtues, and practices that are vital for a successful college career. Additionally, it will encourage you to consider how an Assumption education can further your own moral, intellectual, and spiritual journey in order help you to live a good, meaningful, and fulfilling life.

Logos aims to further Assumption's mission of providing you with a liberal education rooted in the Catholic intellectual tradition that shapes your soul, forms you intellectually, and prepares you for a purposeful and meaningful career.

You can earn one credit for each semester of the Logos program, which means that Logos gives you the opportunity to earn two extra academic credits that count toward graduation.

Logos is a pass/no-credit class, so there are no letter grades. All you need to do to earn credit for Logos is to prepare for and participate in your small group’s meetings!

In Logos, you will:

1. ENGAGE in practices that promote student success, including time management, effective studying, academic advising, and course registration
2. PERFORM activities that are vital to an Assumption education, such as careful reading, clear writing, thoughtful discussion, and respectful debate
3. REFLECT on Assumption’s history, identity, and mission as you discern how you can get the most out your time at Assumption
4. EXPLORE your own experiences and beliefs in order to further your understanding of yourself, goals, and what you are being called to do with your life.

You will meet with your small group and your faculty and student mentors once each week during your first year at Assumption. Many weekly meetings will be practical workshops that communicate important information and cultivate practical skills in order to help you make a smooth transition to college life. In other meetings, you will engage in serious and thoughtful conversations with your peers that allow you to explore your own questions, concerns, and aspirations.

‘Logos’ is a Greek word that refers to the capacity for reasoned speech. Aristotle argued that this capacity is essential to human life and that human excellence consists in exercising this capacity well. Further, because rational speech is only possible in and through the activity of communication, Aristotle suggeseted  that humans can only fulfill their full potential by participating in rational discourse and serious debate with others, as members of a community devoted to the pursuit of justice and the common good. 

The Gospel of John expands Aristotle’s insights by depicting logos as “the Word” that exists with and as God, as “the Word” through which God created all things, as “the Word” that became flesh and lived among us in the person of Jesus Christ. In this way, logos comes to light as the essence of God, as the governing principle of nature, and as the capacity that allows human beings to enter into loving communion with God and one another. Thus, the Gospel of John teaches that it is only in and through participation in divine logos that finite and fallen human beings can receive the redemption that is necessary for a fulfilling, fulfilled, and everlasting life.

Logos aims to embody and explore these insights into the intimate connection between God, community, communication, and human flourishing by providing Assumption students and faculty members with an opportunity to exercise logos together. Its goal is to help members of the Assumption community to deepen their understanding of reasoned speech as an expression of humanity, a manifestation of the divine, and an integral part of a human life well-lived. 
 

Samuel A. Stoner
Director, Logos Institute
Associate Professor of Philosophy
sa.stoner@assumption.edu