On the east bank of the Fox River, St. Norbert College is attempting a difficult kind of modernization. The college is old enough to have a motto in Latin, small enough for a professor to become a mentor, and unusual enough to be the only Norbertine college in the world. It is also adding majors in applied artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, nutrition, digital marketing, healthcare administration and supply chain management. There is even a concentration in game development. The list sounds less like a monastery's descendant than a response to a jobs dashboard.
That juxtaposition is the story. St. Norbert is a private nonprofit liberal arts college in De Pere, Wisconsin, part of the greater Green Bay area. It serves traditional undergraduates first, along with transfer students, working professionals in its MBA and theology programs, certificate learners and a regional network of employers and alumni. Its job is broader than teaching classes: it houses students, advises them, connects them to research and internships, runs Division III athletics, offers spiritual and wellness support, and tries to deliver a degree on time.
The institution began in 1898, when Dutch immigrant and Norbertine priest Abbot Bernard Pennings founded a school to train young men for the priesthood. He soon added a commerce program for lay students. That early pivot - keep the mission, widen the use case - has become newly relevant.
A product called communio
Colleges rarely describe themselves as products, but students experience them that way: a stack of instruction, relationships, credentials, place and promise. St. Norbert's organizing idea is communio, the Norbertine word for a community united as one. The college translates it into mutual esteem, trust, sincerity, faith and responsibility. Its mission is to foster intellectual, spiritual and personal development through Catholic, Norbertine and liberal arts traditions.
This is its clearest difference from competitors. Wisconsin students can choose a public university, a technical college, another private Catholic institution or a different small liberal arts campus. Many can offer business, biology and internships. None can truthfully claim the Norbertine category. St. Norbert's advantage is not merely that the tradition is rare, but that it provides a vocabulary for how people should learn together.
“Docere verbo et exemplo.”College motto - “To teach by word and example”
The practical expression matters. A family considering a private college wants more than atmosphere. St. Norbert offers a four-year graduation guarantee to qualifying first-time students who carry the required credit load, make academic progress and meet the published conditions. If the college fails to make the necessary coursework available, it waives tuition for what remains. The fine print is real, but so is the operational implication: advising, curriculum and scheduling have to behave as one service.
Financial aid is another part of the proposition. The college says 99 percent of first-year students receive aid. That does not make a private education inexpensive by definition; it means the relevant price is usually the net price after scholarships and grants, not the figure on the rate card. The customer problem is equal parts access, uncertainty and time. SNC's response is aid, personal advising and the guarantee.
The catalog gets a faster lane
The most consequential recent move is a partnership with Rize Education. Shared online courses and services let small colleges introduce specialized programs more quickly than building every department alone. At St. Norbert, the relationship dates to 2024 and expanded in 2026 through a “College of the Future” initiative that adds benchmarking, planning, instructional design, enrollment support and career-readiness tools.
The early signal is meaningful but not conclusive. The college reported that nearly 10 percent of its undergraduates had enrolled in Rize-supported programs. Nine in 10 participating students said the courses helped prepare them for post-graduation goals, and more than 90 percent wanted at least one online course each term. Those are college-reported survey results, not an independent verdict. They nevertheless reveal what students value: flexibility attached to practical application.
The arrangement also surfaces the risk. If many colleges license similar courses, the academic catalog becomes less distinctive. St. Norbert therefore has to make the surrounding experience do more work: faculty contact, ethical reasoning, residential community, local networks and a liberal arts core that gives technical material context. The shared course is inventory. The institution around it is the brand.
A regional ladder, not an island
St. Norbert is also designing cleaner routes into and through the college. A 2025 agreement with Northeast Wisconsin Technical College allows qualifying data-analytics graduates to transfer as many as 64 credits and finish a bachelor's degree in two additional years. In June 2026, Fox Valley Technical College students gained mapped pathways into business administration and accounting, including guaranteed admission at a 2.5 GPA and personalized advising.
These agreements solve an unglamorous problem: transfer credits that vanish between institutions. They also place SNC inside the region's workforce system rather than above it. Students can begin with applied training, add the broader analytical and communication work of a bachelor's degree, then enter employment or continue. Beginning in fall 2026, qualified undergraduates from any major can pursue a 4+1 MBA and earn both degrees in five years.
The graduate portfolio is compact. The 37-credit MBA is part-time, usually taught on weekday evenings, and makes business ethics a required component. The Master of Theological Studies, offered in De Pere and Albuquerque, is built for pastoral leaders, chaplains, religious educators and other adult learners. Online certificates extend the brand into shorter, nondegree education. Together, these offerings broaden the customer base without pretending St. Norbert is a giant research university.
Where it sits in the market
St. Norbert occupies a specific corner: small, residential, private, Catholic and career-conscious. Lawrence, Ripon, Beloit and Carthage compete for students who want a close liberal arts environment. Marquette and other Catholic institutions offer faith-linked education at a different scale. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and technical colleges offer nearby, often lower-cost routes. The useful comparison is not “best college.” It is which bundle fits a student's constraints and ambitions.
The college's business model follows the nonprofit higher-education pattern: tuition and fees, gifts, endowment support, grants and auxiliary revenue fund instruction and campus operations. Recent finances add necessary context. In 2025, President Laurie Joyner wrote that cost reductions, program streamlining and efficiency work had produced positive operating results, while enrollment pressure remained. The message was candid: mission and solvency have to travel together.
This explains the urgency behind new majors, shared services and transfer deals. They are not decorative innovation. They are attempts to increase relevance, reach and operating discipline in a market where the number of traditional-age students is tightening and price sensitivity is high. The college's reported fiscal 2025 Form 990 revenue was about $111.6 million. Revenue is not profit, and a campus with buildings, staff, aid and student services carries a substantial fixed-cost base.
The old promise, translated
The best case for St. Norbert is not that a Catholic liberal arts education magically guarantees a job. It is that technical competence is more useful when joined to writing, judgment, context and responsibility - and that students are more likely to develop those capacities when adults know them well. The college's 2026 campuswide AI effort makes the argument plainly: graduates need technological fluency and the ability to identify false information, think critically and use tools ethically.
The shared course is inventory. The institution around it is the brand.
For prospective students, that translates into concrete actions. They can study a traditional discipline or a newer career-facing major; conduct research with faculty; pursue internships and study abroad; join service programs and campus ministry; compete in Division III athletics; transfer from a regional technical college; or stack a bachelor's degree with an MBA. None of those features is unique alone. Their combination, under the discipline of communio, is the offer.
St. Norbert became coeducational in 1952, installed its first lay president in 2017 and chose its first woman president, Joyner, in 2023. Each shift widened who could lead or learn there without erasing the founding story. Applied AI is another such test. The institution will be judged not by the novelty of the major but by whether students can use the technology with skill and moral seriousness.
That is a restrained but defensible place in the market. St. Norbert is not trying to outscale public systems or out-specialize technical colleges. It is trying to make a small residential community practical enough for the present and distinctive enough to justify choosing. The 900-year idea survives only if it keeps becoming useful.