I had a great visit to Saint Leo University in Saint Leo, Florida, about 50 minutes from Tampa. It's a Benedictine university of 2400 students on campus and 13,000 virtual students. It's a very beautiful campus with Mediterranean Spanish architecture, and I'm told that House Beautiful ranked Saint Leo in the top 20 for top dorm rooms in the country. The top five majors here are Biology, Criminal Justice, Psychology, Computer Science, and Management.

The Criminal Justice program here seems very robust. I met a professor from the department who had tons of enthusiasm and years of experience working in The Hague as an attorney. There's an actual crime scene house on campus where faculty lead students through simulated crime scenes.

We were told other faculty members had a similar level of prior experience in the field. Students transition from the simulated environment to an internship with a county, state or federal agency by second semester sophomore year. There are 3 tracks within the major: Homeland Security, Terrorism, and Legal Studies.

Additionally, the state of Florida gave Saint Leo University $1 million for a state-of-the-art robotics lab, and it really was impressive. They also have an amazing avatar program they use via Zoom, integrating it into many academic programs to give students a chance to role play, whether they're nursing students learning how to talk with patients and families in various situations, or business students practicing interview skills.

This is a place where professors know every student by name, and the ones I met truly love teaching and truly care. I didn't get a strong religious vibe at all, and was told that there are no formal religious organizations of any kind on campus. They said, "We don't teach because you're Catholic. We teach because we're Catholic," which reinforced for me the idea that education is a vocation for those who work here.