Big Faith on Campus

Catholic students at two secular universities soon will have a dormitory all their own. In a historic collaboration, Bishop John G. Noonan of Orlando, Fla., Anthony J. Catanese, president of Florida Institute of Technology, and Matt Zerrusen, president of the Newman Student Housing Fund, were among attendees at a groundbreaking for the Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Student Residence at the institute in Melbourne, Fla., on Dec. 7. The ceremony was the second in as many months at a secular university in which housing specifically designated for Catholic students was being constructed. Another groundbreaking took place on Oct. 3 at Texas A&M University-Kingsville for the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center. The Newman Student Housing Fund is financing the new residence hall at F.I.T. “Fifty percent of students on college campuses lose their faith by the time they graduate,” Zerrusen said. “This is unacceptable.” He called the new facilities “pioneers” for what could become “authentic Catholic campuses inside secular ones” nationwide.