Transforming the Mission Field at St. Al's

With more than 7,300 students at Michigan Tech, the opportunity to share the Catholic faith with the community is tremendous. Of those students, about 5,900 are undergraduates and 1,400 are graduates. That number includes 1,003
international students and 4,809 Michigan residents.

Reaching more of the students is a top priority for St. Al's. Through K-Day, Winter Carnival, intramural sports, dances, and more, St. Al’s connects with students through food and fellowship. That interaction creates the opportunity to invite them to St. Al's for Mass, Bible studies, retreats, and catechetical courses. Every day we seek to serve more and more students!

Since the arrival of a FOCUS team on campus in 2014, student participation at Mass has increased by at least 25 percent. And, involvement in our other activities also is on the rise. Even though there has been substantial growth,
there still are more students on campus to reach.

Every summer St. Albert the Great, in collaboration with other religious groups on campus, sends out a religious preference card to all of Michigan Tech’s incoming freshmen. The students can choose to send the card back with
their religious preference marked if they would like to be connected with a ministry on campus.

In recent years, the number of responding freshmen indicating their religion as "none" has grown dramatically, more than quadrupling between 2015 and 2018. This indicates that for many students an invitation to participate at St. Al’s is not asking them to leave one faith background for another, but rather an invitation to do something instead of nothing.

Here at Michigan Tech, St. Al's has the beautiful opportunity and mission to transform the life of the entire campus. With your help we are building a ministry that has the capacity to invite every person on campus into a relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church.