John Paul the Great Catholic University / With permission
CV NEWS FEED // John Paul the Great Catholic University in Escondido, California, is undergoing significant growth this year as the school invests in new renovations, makes plans for a larger chapel, and expands academic programs to increase opportunities for students.
The school’s founder and president, Dr. Derry Connolly, Ph.D., told CatholicVote in a Zoom interview that the changes aren’t meant to focus on growing the student body. Rather, they’re meant to continue focusing on academic excellence and commitment to the school’s mission.
“I’m not a fan of having [the school] very large,” he said. “I would prefer to have a small group who is really, really good at what they do.”
Connolly founded the university, also known as JPCatholic, in 2003 after he felt God put it on his heart to open a Catholic school for creative arts and visual media. JPCatholic began with 30 students. Today, the university has almost 300.
The school offers degree programs that aren’t normally found at a small Catholic university, including game development, animation, cinematography, and film directing. The school also provides programs focused on business and marketing, as well as humanities.
Campus Expansion
Connolly said that JPCatholic is seeing some major changes and updates in 2024. One is the renovation of a building into a creative arts complex that will more than double the university’s academic space.
According to a news release from the university, the 30,000-square-foot structure will be divided into two buildings, with the cinematic arts and visual arts programs in one and the performing arts program in the other.
In addition to providing students with more classrooms and computer labs, the new complex will also include a soundstage, illustration studio, acting rehearsal studio, and more. The complex is set to be completed in early 2025.
“This new space [creative arts complex] will allow us to double, but for us it’s building a community of people who know and love Jesus and who are creatives,” Connolly said. “I think it’s very difficult to maintain a very strong Catholic commitment when you’re very large. I find that for 300 you can build a cohesive Catholic community.”
Connolly also said that the university is currently working on the development of several new academic programs, including digital music, fashion design, and real estate.
He added that more building plans are underway, as the university is currently working on a design for a chapel named after Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The new chapel will be big enough for roughly 300 students—a major upgrade from the current chapel, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, which seats about 20 people.
New Music Program Development
Dr. Robert Giracello, adjunct professor of music at JPCatholic and the driving force behind the development of the school’s new digital music program, told CatholicVote in an email interview that he also hopes that the university will stay small, as it’s one of JPCatholic’s defining features.
He added that he’s seen the school expand in several other ways, including an increasingly higher caliber of new students, more creative output, and the physical space of the creative arts complex.
According to Giracello, the new complex will be a “dream come true” for the digital music program, as his music classes have been attracting more and more students. The additional space will allow more students to take his classes, but the new structures—especially the soundstage—will greatly enhance the digital music program.
“We’ve been developing the program since the beginning—each quarter we’ve continually offered new programs, whether that’s a lab course like Electronic Music or Recording Arts, or a lecture survey course like History of Pop Music or Orchestration,” he said. “This gives our graduates a wide array of possible professions beyond just film scoring or composing—including working as an audio production specialist, an arranger or accompanist, or a church musician.”
Giracello also praised JPC for developing the music program at a thoughtful pace, and for being “sure to walk before we run.”
“We’ve really taken our time to cultivate interest in the student body, to develop classes slowly, and to make sure we have a wave of new students to flesh out the program,” he continued:
Adding music to our current curriculum was sort of a “no-brainer,” but there are a lot of other tangential programs we can add as time goes on, and I think if we follow this model, we’ll succeed.
Focusing on Internal and External Expansion
Raphael Whalen, a student in the Communications Media program with an emphasis in Digital Music, was the “guinea pig” for the new program and will be the first to graduate from JPCatholic with that degree.
He told CatholicVote by email that JPCatholic isn’t just focusing on internal expansion, but it’s also expanding into the surrounding community.
“I think JPCatholic is now doing a better job than ever at getting involved in the community space, and really gaining traction in the city of Escondido, with which we have such a healthy, symbiotic relationship,” Whalen said.
“Inside the campus, we fill our hallways with film posters, art, and creative inspiration; and I believe that it’s time for that to start percolating outside and onto the walls of the city which supports us,” he added.
Whalen also praised the digital music program, crediting Giracello for teaching him “so much about music in a way that I’m not sure I could ever repay.”
“While currently, I’m in the financial planning field, my career trajectory is one in music, and I have Giracello—backed up by the firmly supportive, artistic culture of JPCatholic—in part to thank for that,” he said, adding that he will be releasing his first album in the style of cinematic pop within the next few months.
Impacting Culture for Christ
According to Connolly, JPCatholic’s mission is “to form students who will go out and impact culture for Christ.” He added that JPCatholic’s impact comes from its community, since creating films, video games, and other media “require very large groups of people.”
“It’s an environment for people—all of these creatives really enjoy the fact that they’re creating with like minded people,” he said. “I think that’s a huge service to humanity.”
He added that though technology used in media and the creative arts is constantly changing, the mission has held strong over the years.
“I think the mission is timeless – as long as human beings live on the planet I think there’s a need for Catholics to impact the culture that we’re living in and do it for Jesus,” Connolly said:
Our faith is timeless… I think the challenges we as humans face are identical throughout history. It’s just we have different technologies and there’s a lot that is different but our human challenge and our desire for salvation and our need for encountering Jesus is never going to change.
