12/18/2025
A Grateful Farewell from Kateri College of the Liberal and Practical Arts
After four years of prayer, planning, and generous support from many of you, we have decided that we do not have a viable path for opening Kateri College.
With sadness but also with acceptance, on December 2, 2025, we voted with our Board of Directors to dissolve our nonprofit and direct our remaining funds to another Catholic institution that is aligned with our mission statement: Harmel Academy of the Trades in Grand Rapids, Michigan (www.harmelacademy.org).
A few other schools are forming young Catholic men in faith, virtue, and skilled trades—precisely the integration of head, heart, and hands that animated our original vision. While they do not offer exactly what we had hoped to do, we would recommend you look into them as viable options: College of St. Joseph the Worker (collegeofstjoseph.com) and San Damiano of the Trades (sandamianotrades.org).
We are profoundly grateful for every prayer and every gift that made this effort possible. Though Kateri College will not open its doors, our mission to change higher education and to emphasize the importance of the trades and the liberal arts remains necessary. These other apostolates are carrying on this mission and hopefully others will have success in opening as well. The need is great but the schools too few.
For our part, we are focusing on raising our three beautiful children and have moved to Oro Valley, AZ, which offers more opportunities for them as they enter their teenage years.
We are shifting our efforts to develop our other educational nonprofit organization, The Mother Rose Colloquia. The scope is much smaller than Kateri as its mission is simply to offer college-level lectures and academic courses in the humanities primarily for cloistered Catholic religious communities with the possibility of other venues as the project develops. You can see our work here, www.motherrose.org .
We would be honored if you wanted to support our efforts there or simply to stay connected with us through this new apostolate.
Thank you again for your interest in Kateri College and for all the support you gave us.
May you and your families have a merry Christmas and a blessed new year!
Drs. John and Helen Freeh
Send a message to learn more
