Cate Levri ’09

“I honestly can’t think of anything it wouldn’t be helpful with,” Cate Levri says, reflecting on her years in Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Honors Program. “My classmates ended up everywhere, from med school to religious life!”

Cate went on to receive her master of arts in historical and systematic theology at The Catholic University of America and is now a doctoral candidate in historical theology.

Cate says Franciscan University helped her prepare for graduate school in many ways. “The atmosphere of prayer supported me as I discerned how the Lord was calling me to serve. My professors taught me how to read carefully, write clearly, and think both critically and sympathetically. And my professors and the Third Order Regular priests, brothers, and sisters introduced me to the Franciscan tradition of theology, which I now study as a graduate student.”

At Catholic University, she also got the opportunity to be a teaching assistant for several theology courses, including liturgy and the Old Testament.

“Enduring Questions of Catholic Theology was taught as a seminar discussion,” Cate says. “We often touched on the same questions we talked about in Honors, so as a moderator I had a feel for what questions would get students talking.”

The transition from student to moderator was easy, she says. “A couple of our Honors professors had us lead a class session, so I learned how to structure a class to start with a question and come to a conclusion.”

Cate decided she wanted to enroll in a Great Books program in college after she attended a summer camp with seminar-style discussions of theology, philosophy, and literature.

“Discussing the greatest ideas of the Western tradition and seeing how they developed and changed throughout history, taught us to think, reason, and communicate,” Cate says. “Studying these works introduced me to our great Catholic tradition.”

Cate now lives in Texas with her husband, John Levri ’09, where he serves as a U.S. Army physician.