A single, rigorous, affordable degree in the traditional liberal arts and entrepreneurship
The B.A. in Liberal Arts and Entrepreneurship
Four integrated academic tutorials
Great Texts
Quadrivial Arts
Entrepreneurship
Formation
$16,000/year tuition includes
Classes and fees
Two week-long study abroad experiences
Membership at our campus co-working space
Students benefit from
Work experience and mentorship from Civic Partners
Donor funded scholarships
Homestay options with our Church Partners
Great Texts
There is no substitute for grappling with history’s most important texts and biggest questions through Socratic discussion. Students read original sources in chronological order, from the ancients to the moderns, and then gather around a common table to ask what they have to teach us.
Faculty do not simply tell students what to think. They act as guides, and our undergraduates will be required to search these primary texts together to learn why they were created, how they advanced thought, and what they mean for us today.
Our Great Texts list consists of philosophy, literature, politics, economics, theology, religious writing, and psychology. Instead of treating individual disciplines separately, we study them as a historical conversation among the greatest minds, across fields of knowledge.
In addition to asking life’s biggest questions, in the Great Texts seminar students learn to read deeply and think critically, to listen well and value diverging perspectives, and to seek the truth wherever it lies.
The traditional Liberal Arts consist of the Trivium (Logic, Grammar, Rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music). Today many associate the Liberal Arts exclusively with the humanities, but historically they also include what we call the sciences—examining the unity between nature and the mind’s ability to comprehend it. Hildegard’s curriculum emphasizes study of classical mathematics, the sciences, nature, and knowledge in the Quadrivial Arts sequence.
YEAR 1: Geometry and Arithmetic
YEAR 2: Astronomy and Music
YEAR 3: Natural Philosophy, or the Liberal Sciences
YEAR 4: Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, and Advanced Theology
This progression is based on the nature of knowing. Paraphrasing Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas writes, “we must investigate the method of scientific thinking before the sciences themselves.” There is an order to knowing.
Hildegard’s curriculum in the Quadrivial Arts begins with the nature of human reasoning, then moves to music as a formation in the harmony of things, next to physics, biology, and chemistry as the identification of this harmony in nature; and finally to metaphysics, the study of those real things that are properly comprehended with the mind.
Quadrivial Arts
“It’s no easy task—indeed it’s very difficult—to realize that in every soul there is an instrument that is purified and rekindled by such subjects [liberal arts] when it has been blinded and destroyed by other ways of life, an instrument that is more important to preserve than ten thousand eyes, since only with it can the truth be seen.”
— Plato, Republic
Since antiquity, leaders of society have recognized that a holistic education must take into consideration the proper ordering and integration of work and commerce into our common life together. Leaders from Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, to Aristotle and St. Paul, to Queen Elizabeth and John Milton, all built their civil careers around a mastery of the fundamentals that allow for shared society to become greater than life in isolation.
What we call Entrepreneurship has gone by many names, such as civics, business, statesmanship, and simply leadership. Entrepreneurial education consists of the formation of leaders who work to serve the common good, who channel the best of politics, profit, human relationships, and religion to create long-term virtue in the communities they serve and improve.
Students at Hildegard study Entrepreneurship. It is both a liberal and practical education, giving students the tools they need to act upon the convictions they form in their classical study.
Highlights of the Entrepreneurship studies:
Seminar-Style Coursework. Students take courses in entrepreneurial thought, covering topics such as economics and finance, design thinking, business model creation, marketing and communication, research, strategic planning, entities and investments, and the theology of work.
Civic Partner Program. Hildegard College’s Civic Partners are industry leaders in business, nonprofit organizations, and the arts who invest their time and expertise in our undergraduates. Students interact with them in the classroom, through internships, and as potential employers after graduation. Through the Civic Partners, our Entrepreneurship courses are relevant and oriented toward real-world challenges.
Internship. All Hildegard undergraduates are required to complete at least one internship in any sector of for-profit, nonprofit, the arts, or ministry. Students may choose to work with one of our Civic Partners in such areas as technology, health care, design, media production, marketing, education, or finance. Or, they may explore opportunities outside of Hildegard College’s professional network in their area of interest.
Polymath Project
Entrepreneurship
Polymath Project
Our namesake, Hildegard of Bingen, was a polymath—not an expert in just one thing but a practitioner of many areas of knowledge and work. During their senior year, Hildegard undergraduates will design their own Polymath Project. These projects address real intellectual, social, cultural, ethical, or technical problems. Students may use their Polymath Projects to pave a career path, to serve a specific community, or to help transition to graduate school.
The study of Liberal Arts requires scholé, or leisure. In most universities today, knowledge is subservient to professional training. But the pursuit of knowledge becomes liberating to the soul only when it is undertaken in rest and formation. Students must integrate what they learn into their habits, their loves, their spiritual lives, and their acts of creation.
Formation is the heartbeat of Hildegard’s curriculum. It requires students to sit with what they learn. At Hildegard, the Formation tutorial consists of three activities:
Formation Method. We believe that true education combats three lies of contemporary culture—individualism, industrialism, and consumerism. In response, Hildegard faculty have developed the Formation Method, a practice of eight disciplines that help students synthesize what they learn into their spiritual lives and habits of thought. In regular Formation meetings, students grow in intellectual grit and spiritual maturity. They learn to adapt these practices to social and professional settings, taking with them a capacity for resilience-amidst-change that few college graduates possess.
1-on-1 Writing Coaching. The highest form of learning is demonstrated when we move beyond repetition and create something new with what we know. At Hildegard, we approach writing as formation—a progression from sense-making to creation. There is no magic formula to growing as a communicator. It requires individual coaching, humility, and structured practices that transform passion into reasoned discourse.
All College Lecture. The Hildegard study body will gather for lectures delivered by faculty, guest speakers, and thought leaders. Lectures model high-level discourse and the integration of the life of the mind and work. They are also occasions for collegiality and networking.
