At DeSales, a Catholic University founded on Salesian values; you will find a positive attitude and believe that significant results come from small actions. We emphasize academics, personalized attention, career, graduate school preparation, and core values because it is not just about developing minds but also about building the whole person. Here, we prepare students to become people of character who go forth with the motivation to view each day as an opportunity to make good things happen.
DeSales University is named for a man who lived more than 400 years ago, but whose lessons are still timely and practical for today's world. Francis de Sales was known as "The Gentleman Saint," and his spirit of optimism, hope, freedom, and confidence in God's love prompts us to please God by doing everything - big or small.
DeSales University is firmly and publicly committed to the principles of Roman Catholic doctrine and morality. It also fully recognizes that the search for truth requires an atmosphere of intellectual freedom, and that love demands an openness to all that is good.
DeSales carefully distinguishes between the free pursuit of truth - which guarantees every member of the campus community - and its commitment to the Catholic Church's teachings.
For DeSales University, Christian humanism means that every aspect of human experience is capable of enlightenment by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This Gospel brings light to each dimension of personal existence (physical, intellectual, social, moral, aesthetic, and religious) and every environmental domain (natural world, social institutions, cultural achievements, historical periods, and religious societies).
The encounter between God's Word and the human person's concrete world makes an entirely meaningful existence possible. DeSales University strives to teach the student what it means to be Christian in a Salesian way, what it means to embrace one's own life, and what it means to bring this Good News to the human family.
According to the philosophy of Christian humanism, it is the mission of DeSales University to provide men and women with quality higher education as developed by Saint Francis de Sales and his spiritual heirs. The University imparts knowledge about and develops talents for personal, familial, and societal living. DeSales University enriches the human community and enhances the dignity of the individual through its educational endeavors. In its work, the University fosters a vital and respectful dialogue between the Roman Catholic faith and human culture.
There is a lively, contagious spirit here that makes DeSales University very different from other schools. Please take a look through our viewbook, browse our site, and chat with our admissions counselors. You will get a sense of what it might be like to live, study, and play as a DeSales University student. However, until you come and experience it for yourself, you will only truly understand what makes this a special place.
The Leadership Scholarship is a four-year, full-tuition scholarship offered to six students who have shown outstanding leadership in their high school careers and plan to continue developing those skills at DeSales.
The DeSales Experience is a co-curricular program that combines several University programs, career services, and academic classes to ink character formation, service, and leadership with your academic pursuits. The DeSales Experience will help you become a leader and ethical citizen in the Salesian tradition. When you complete the DeSales Experience will be recognized with a certificate at a ceremony with faculty and staff, and it will be listed on your co-curricular transcript.
DeSales University embraces the honor and responsibility of searching for the truth about the human person, about the world in which we live, and about the God who is its source and fulfillment. In this quest, the University promotes the ongoing engagement with a culture called for in the pope's apostolic constitution on Catholic Universities, namely "the encounter ... between the unfathomable richness of the salvific message of the Gospel and the variety and immensity of the fields of knowledge in which that richness is incarnated."
On January 28, 1961, His Excellency, the Most Reverend Joseph McShea, was appointed Bishop of the Allentown Diocese by His Holiness, Pope John XXIII. This Diocese comprises five counties in northeast Pennsylvania: Berks, Carbon, Lehigh, Northampton, and Schuylkill. One of the first actions of Bishop McShea was to make a study of the educational facilities of the Diocese.
Since the Allentown Diocese had been split off from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, it already possessed a well-organized elementary and high school educational system. It was evident, however, that the system needed to be enlarged. Bishop McShea announced that there would be a drive to obtain funds for the expansion of the high school system, and at the same time, he called attention to the fact that there was no Catholic college for men in the Diocese. At the Bishop's request, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales agreed to assume the responsibility for establishing a liberal arts college to serve this need.
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