In early 2024, Hannah Keegan was announced as the inaugural director for the Center for Faith, Mission and Catholic Education. With a mission of cultivating an authentic Catholic culture at Thomas More, the Center was launched to serve as a catalyst for transformative faith experiences, intentional mission integration and creative Catholic educational programs on campus and in the wider community.

In this Saints Spotlight, Keegan reflects on her first year at the helm of the Center and provides an early look at what’s to come in 2025.

SS: Hannah, thanks for joining us!

HK: Thanks for having me.

SS: Hannah, you previously shared that you converted to Catholicism in your early 20s after being raised in a Protestant faith. Can you share a little bit about what that experience was like and the role that your conversion played in pursuing a career as a theology professor?

HK: Sure. I was raised in the south in Arkansas in a very Protestant community. So, there was not a great presence of Catholicism in Arkansas. And I went to college sort of having renounced any faith and committed myself to studying philosophy in undergrad in a small liberal arts school in Arkansas.

And then through the course of some friendships, some different professors, and some internships in Washington, DC, I encountered a community of people living Catholicism that really fascinated me and kind of held a very radically different way of living and way of looking at reality that that I became jealous of, that I was curious of. What makes them the way that they are?

So, when I was living in DC the summer between my junior and senior year of college of undergrad, I really kind of fell head over heels for this community and discovered a vibrancy of life that I wanted for myself. And so I entered the community…more and more and decided to enter the RCIA program when I came back, the initiation program for entering the Catholic Church as an adult. And so I entered that program in Arkansas when I returned from my senior year of undergrad, and I entered the church my senior year of undergrad.

And after that, I went to study theology because I wanted to understand what I just did by entering the Church. I had been studying philosophy, so I had a great interest in these big existential questions of faith, of reason, of the human person and the heart. So, I went to the John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC to study, which is housed at Catholic University of America to study theology after the undergrad in philosophy.

And then I was married. I taught theology here and there in different communities for different continuing education programs or high school programs while we were first married and having children. And we moved to Cincinnati for my husband’s work as a physician at Children’s.

And we’re in the throes of having lots of little children. And at a certain point, I understood that Thomas More needed an adjunct in theology to contribute to the theology program and the students who take the theology classes. And it was perfect because it was a way for me to still engage in these deep questions and this passion I had for the discipline while also being primarily a mom at home with my children.

And as they’ve grown and been in school and as my desire to teach and give more to the job has grown, it’s been beautiful because there have been increasing opportunities in the department and then also this year with the Center to invest myself more as a professor and also as a contributor to the Thomas More community.

SS: Hannah, you were announced as the inaugural director of the Center for Faith, Mission and Catholic Identity at Thomas More earlier this year, as you just said. What have been your top priorities at the center since being named director?

HK: I would say my first priority was to understand better who are the people who make up this great community. So, to understand a lot of the history of the University, which is rich and long in 100 years, and also to understand who are the people that are making big contributions in all kinds of areas – administrative {and} regarding students’ curricular contributions to the community.

So just trying to get a better lay of the land because the goal of the center is to integrate the Catholic identity into all aspects of campus. And so in order to do that, I have to understand and better know all aspects of campus.

So the role of the Center for me is to kind of valorize and to bring to life more the things that are already good, true, and beautiful happening around the University, and to try to integrate all of the things that are already fruitful and bearing fruit and giving life to our community, to integrate them into our mission more and more to be a Catholic institution in the Diocese of Covington and for the wider region.

SS: What would you want our current or even future students at Thomas More to know about the Center for Faith, Mission and Catholic Education?

HK: I would want them to know that I want their involvement and contributions to the center because it’s at the service of the University and the University exists to serve the students, you know, so their questions, their passions, their skepticisms. Their contributions are really essential for the Center to be useful for them and in order to serve them, I need to know them more.

So I’m really interested in having the center be a place of academic rigor where we think through deep questions about life and faith, but also it has more than an academic component. It also has a community component or in that regards the community of Thomas More and also the wider community, so I think there are different tiers that the Center is operating in, the local reality of the faculty, staff and students, the wider reality of the diocese and the culture at large.

So, regarding students, I’m super interested in what they’re interested in. I want to know what they’re passionate about and the more things I discover that they’re passionate about, the more, the more I can show glimpses of how their passion is relevant to the passion of the church, which is for their destiny, for their ultimate horizon and happiness.

SS: What are some of the events that you have planned for the Thomas More community in 2025?

HK: That’s a great question. The ideas we have for the 2025 year are to do more interdisciplinary initiatives. So, for the community involvement, I really have a heart for trying to bring together departments – to have events on campus with students from different areas of study to kind of come together for a common conversation.

So, some examples that we did this year are the Massimo Robberto event on the James Webb Space Telescope that happened in the spring. And this was an event that brought together the physics department and also the theology department, but then other students as well.

We just had the papal astronomer come and that was a beautiful event to again bring together the science and humanities a little bit more. We have a Flannery O’Connor film screening tonight, actually, and that is drawing together two different pieces of the humanities. So for 2025, we hope to do more of this.

We want to have a series of events leading up to sustainability days that kind of focus on a broader conception of sustainability that has in mind what Pope Francis calls integral ecology, the whole person, and our personal involvement with all of creation. We’d like to have some events on different social topics like immigration.

The Institute for Religious Liberty, which is a facet of the center, has a whole series of John Paul II events, and one event that we would like to do for the center is one on ecumenism, the dialogue between the different denominations of Christianity in the Catholic Church. So, what does it mean that we that we all recognize in our brothers and sisters in Christ? What is the unity among all of the faithful Catholics and Protestants? And John Paul II wrote a great encyclical on ecumenism.

So, in light of this moment for him and the series at the University, we would like to contribute to that conversation in that way as well. So, the goals of the Center for the Thomas More community for me are to continue to bring people into conversation from different pockets and different questions, to have everyone have a seat at the table to make a contribution.

SS: Thank you, Hannah, for joining us for the Saints Spotlight. For all of our viewers, you can find more videos like this on our YouTube channel @ThomasMoreKY.

HK: Thank you so much for having me and for asking about the work of the center and my personal experience. And I just would love to invite anyone to come visit me. I’m in the new building. My office is on the second floor right past the coffee shop. So I would love to meet you if we haven’t met yet and to hear your thoughts and questions and to see how we can collaborate in the community work.

You can learn more about the Center for Faith, Mission and Catholic Education here. Read the full press release announcing Hannah Keegan as the inaugural director of the Center for Faith, Mission and Catholic Education here.