Associate Chaplain for Catholic Life Father Peter Tremblay achieved a Doctor of Ministry (DMin) in Preaching from the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri, in May 2026.
At the encouragement of his Franciscan community, Associate Chaplain for Catholic Life Father Peter Tremblay began to consider pursuing an advanced degree.
“They said I loved learning, reading, and constantly expanding my mind,” Tremblay said.
His fellow friars recognized preaching as one of Tremblay’s gifts and talents, which led him to the Doctor of Ministry in Preaching (DMin) program at the Aquinas Institute of Theology located in Saint Louis, Missouri. The program’s integrative principles would allow him to hone his skill in preaching to the students at Elon University as well as teaching homiletics to seminarians and other priests.
The process was not easy for Tremblay. In addition to still serving the students and university community at Elon full-time, he had to reframe his mindset to take on a full academic workload.
“I had planned to do three hours of reading, writing or studying each evening. I spent almost all of my free time working towards this degree,” he said. On weekends or days off, he would spend even more time studying.
In addition to the normal academic semesters, he took two summers to research and prepare for his thesis.
When it became time to choose a topic for his thesis, Tremblay decided to research Catholic Social Teaching. Throughout his years at Elon, he has mentored many students through conversations about meaning, purpose and human dignity. This has affected his overall approach to ministry and leadership and led him to deepen his knowledge of Catholic Social Teaching.
His thesis project was the creation of a conversational podcast with Gen Z students. He asked current Elon students Amelia Totaro ’27 and Nick Brillo ’28 to participate as partners on the podcast, allowing them to share their own thoughts and opinions on a variety of topics, including a preferential option for the poor and care of creation. Titled Peace and Good, Tremblay’s hope for listeners of the podcast was to engage and be informed on how their personal decisions can affect the common good.
“I’m most proud of the dozens of hours that my students volunteered in helping me create the podcast. They did a lot of work and that means so much. Even my thesis advisors were amazed to read about how many hours my students put in to help me accomplish the podcast,” Tremblay shared.
After Tremblay’s successful defense of his thesis and graduation, he is more confident than ever in his preaching and ministerial abilities, whereas he felt previously that he relied just on experience and intuition. After overcoming all of his hurdles, Tremblay shared his best advice for anyone facing a new challenge: “Take things one day at a time. Do at least something every day towards your goal. Great achievement is built on consistency and not talent. Be sure that you know why you are doing this, but be open to your reason changing.”