Core Themes

The four core themes of Saint Martin’s University are faith, reason, service and community. Individually and in tandem with one another, these four themes manifest essential elements of our mission and collectively encompass our mission.

Faith
At root the foundation of our beliefs is nothing more, ultimately, than the commitment we have to them. Saint Martin's University is a community committed to the Benedictine dispositions that inspired, founded, and continue to inform our mission: we acknowledge the fundamental necessity of the human confrontation with faith in all its aspects—religious, interpersonal, political, social, in all the commitments required in a life—as a critical element in the pursuit of truth.

Reason
Reason is a fundamental tool in service to the pursuit of truth. Fully appreciating and employing the power of reason at Saint Martin’s University means going beyond the mere production of usefully-skilled and employable graduates, and aims at producing thoughtful, educated, independent thinkers capable of, and interested in, making a positive difference in the world they inhabit.

Service
Teaching and learning should provide opportunities for service to the community. Service, and its partner, hospitality, express essential elements of the Benedictine philosophy. Saint Martin’s University is an entity that serves, and this is thematic of how the community engages in its daily work. Saint Martin's University nurtures the impulse to serve and aims to graduate men and women distinguished by their thoughtful commitment to helping meet societal needs.

Community
The spirit of Benedictine philosophy is nothing without community. Community is a pre-eminently defining characteristic of who we are and what we do at Saint Martin's University. Certainly every campus community may be referred to as a community. However, a distinctive mark of the Benedictine philosophy—of the Saint Martin’s experience as expressed in its mission and embodied in its practices and plans—is self-consciousness regard for people’s mutual inter-dependence and the way we embrace respect for all the necessary work and roles that make the human community.