Angelico Fellows

Each year the Executive Director of the Center for Beauty and Culture offers a select number of “Angelico Fellowships” to incoming freshmen who have demonstrated a deep interest in the experience of beauty. Named after the priest-painter, Blessed Fra Angelico, Angelico Fellows believe in the holiness of beauty and the beauty of holiness, and are eager to understand and experience beauty in all of its different forms (visual arts, music, theater, film, poetry, theology, and the natural world).

Program Highlights

• The Experience of Beauty Seminar: Fellows have the opportunity to take a semester-long course with the Director, which explores why it is urgent for our radically-secularized culture to recover a love for and experience of beauty. The course (which satisfies philosophical inquiry or aesthetics core requirements) introduces students to uplifting but challenging art, literature, film, and music, and teaches students how they can make an encounter with beauty a daily part of their lives, no matter their future professions.
• Distinguished Speaker Series: Fellows are given special access to on-campus lectures and workshops, especially designed for Angelico Fellows.
• Prize for Excellence in the Theology of Beauty and Culture: Each year the Center sponsors an international prize recognizing excellence in Catholic thought and practice in reestablishing the arts and culture as a revelation of God’s mind and the salvific mission of Jesus Christ. Bishop Barron, Cody Swanson (sculptor, from Florence), Sir James MacMillan (internationally-famous composer of sacred music from Scotland), and Glenn Arbery (literary critic and President Emeritus of Wyoming Catholic College) are past recipients.
• Media: In collaboration with the college’s in-house production team, the Center produces videos and podcasts on beauty and culture to extend the Center’s mission to “transform culture in America.” In 2025 Angelico Fellows starred in a film that tells of their adventures along their hiking of St. Cuthbert’s Way, from Melrose, Scotland, to Holy Island, England.

Program Benefits

• Core Friendships: Fellows get a chance to form lasting friendships with other motivated, talented, and inspiring students. Fellows discover that friendships formed around the “eternal questions” will last a lifetime.
• Integrated Vision of Reality: Students learn to see how the different academic disciplines, when built on a spiritual foundation, enrich our vision of the spiritual life.
• Cultural Immersion Opportunities: Fellows visit significant cultural events and sites to enrich their academic studies with firsthand experience.
• Access to Speakers: The Center for Beauty and Culture sponsors speakers for the entire Benedictine community. Angelico Fellows have the opportunity to meet those speakers personally in a more intimate setting.
• Special Recognition: A Certificate of Completion is awarded at the Fellow’s graduation.
• Award: Angelico Fellows may apply to receive a $2,000 award for educational or internship purposes.

Eligibility

Admitted students who fall into one of these categories may apply:

• Standard: Students with a minimum 3.5 high school GPA and minimum 27 ACT, 1260 SAT, or 87 CLT test score.
• Test-Optional: Test-optional applicants with a minimum 3.5 high school GPA.
• Sliding Scale: Students whose individual combination of GPA and test score merits our consideration based on a sliding scale.

Apply to the Fellows

Submit online application and required essay by December 15 for acceptance the following fall.

The application opens October 1.

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