Matt Dinan Case

Matt Dinan is dressed in a suit. *Include news about now*

"When I was in twelfth grade," he says. "I was kind of fed this narrative from my teachers that I was going to be valedictorian. The valedictorian at James M. Hill, where I'm from, always becomes a doctor or an engineer or something and does that sort of thing, makes lots of money."

Dinan, 30-year old professor at STU, says that he took science classes because that's what was expected of him. He did well, but easily admits that he didn't like it.

"I was like, 'I don't want to do this - I hate this stuff! I can't imagine spending the rest of my life, or even the next four years, because I love school, in studying this sort of thing."

Dinan applied to St. Thomas University on the last day of the scholarship deadline.

"My parents didn't really know that I had done this. They just expected me to study science and become a doctor because, you know, that's what somebody who's smart from a rural place should do."

After receiving a major scholarship from STU, his parents told him that he would receive no support from them if he decided to study arts - and that's exactly what he did.

Matt Dinan has been fighting a hard battle in the academic world ever since he came into it. In Dinan's first year back at St. Thomas after graduating in 2006, he is at the rank of assistant professor, the program coordinator for Catholic Studies, and is affiliated with the faculties of political science and Aquinas. More importantly, as the St. John XXIII Chair in Catholic Studies, he's charged with invigorating the program - no easy task in this day and age. But then again, he has never been afraid to question the academic path others expect of him.