Peter V. Sampo
Peter V. Sampo was an educator and college president. He was a founder of four colleges and was first president of two Catholic liberal arts colleges with curricula built on Great Books of Western culture, Magdalen College
and Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, both in New Hampshire. He served as president emeritus of Magdalen College until his death on 27 May 2020.Life and career
Peter V. Sampo made his undergraduate studies at Saint Vincent College and earned the Ph.D. in political science at Notre Dame.
In 1974, Sampo, together with former high-school teacher John Meehan and businessman Francis Boucher, founded Magdalen College in Bedford, New Hampshire.
Sampo was president of Magdalen until 1977, when he left to start Cardinal Newman College in Missouri. After Cardinal Newman College closed for financial reasons in 1985, he began work on Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire, offering a four-year liberal arts curriculum inspired by educators Donald and Louise Cowan. He served as president of Thomas More until 2006.
In 2009 he founded the Erasmus Institute of Liberal Arts, a liberal arts school in Canterbury, New Hampshire offering the Cowan curriculum formerly used at Thomas More College. In 2011, its students joined The College of Saint Mary Magdalen in Warner, New Hampshire along with Sampo and other faculty when the college agreed to offer the Cowan curriculum.
He passed away on 27 May 2020, after receiving last rites from the Magdalen College chaplain, Fr. Roger Boucher.Honors
In 2007 the New England Board of Higher Education gave Sampo its "Higher Education Excellence" award.
The CiRCE Institute for classical education designated Sampo the 2008 winner of its Paideia Prize, named in honor of historian Russell Kirk.
