The IHP memorial & scholarship fund exists
to recognize the unique achievements and service of three professors at the University of Kansas:
Franklyn Nelick, Dennis Quinn, and John Senior, whose contribution to education in a four-semester Pearson Integrated Humanities Program enriched the lives of innumerable students.
The IHP became renowned, in some cases infamous, for its daring “experiment in tradition” in which the literary, poetic, and cultural canon of Western Civilization was approached as a serious and worthy patrimony.
As described by Fr. Francis Bethel in his recently published book, John Senior and the Restoration of Realism, the program aimed to situate students in reality sufficiently that they would be able to fully appreciate good books, and then the great books, and to lead lives of gentle men and gentle ladies. Such an education naturally points to things in the world, and students saw them as good. This immersion in the good, the true, and the beautiful, pointed to the source of these transcendental goods, and many chose to follow into the Catholic Church as a result. The truth pointed to ultimate Truth, something the professors could not and were not wont to stop from happening.
These KU professors taught as a team and employed others to assist in teaching rhetoric, poetry, calligraphy, waltzing, star gazing, and other accomplishments emblematic of the "ordinary" excellence largely lost in the modern age. They challenged students to notice the beauty and meaning of all that was around them, to seek wisdom, and to “be glad of life” as Henry Van Dyke aptly phrased it.
Be glad of life!
Because it gives you the chance
to love and work,
To play and to look up at the stars.
– Henry Van Dyke
Many students passed on this patrimony in their families, in elementary and high school classrooms, parochial and public, as well as in higher education, inspiring the founding of several schools and a private college. The Fund seeks to erect a tasteful, noble memorial near the campus of the University of Kansas at the St. Lawrence Center where they are carrying on the tradition of the professors in their Humanitas Program that teaches the humanities to students enrolled at the University of Kansas. The Memorial is in honor of the Professors and in recognition of the generations of students whose lives they touched and continue to move.
