2011 Conference | Speakers
GREGORY WOLFE
Gregory Wolfe is the founder and publisher of Image Journal, one of America’s top literary quarterlies, and is the director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing as Seattle Pacific University, the first program of it’s kind to integrate a studio writing degree with intensive reflection upon the literary and aesthetic riches of the Judeo-Christian tradition. He is the author of several books including Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith and Mystery; Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography; and Sacred Passion: The Art of William Schickel. Wolfe is also the editor of The New Religious Humanists: A Reader. Wolfe has published over 200 essays, reviews, and articles in numerous journals, including Commonweal and First Things. His essays have been anthologized in collections such as The Best Christian Writing and The Best Catholic Writing. He and his wife, Suzanne, live in Seattle with their four children.
DR. VIGEN GUROIAN
Dr. Vigen Guroian is Professor of Religious Studies in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Virginia, the same school from which received his B.A. in 1970. In 1978 he received his PhD from Drew University. He is the author of nine books including the Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classical Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination and Rallying the Really Human Things: Moral Imagination in Politics, Literature, and Everyday Life. He has contributed over 200 articles to journals, magazines, books, encyclopedias, and newspapers on a wide range of subjects including morality, ethics, liturgy, marriage and family, children’s literature, the sexualization of the modern American university, and bio-ethics. He has been featured on NPR’s Talk of the Nationand well as Chuck Colson’s Break Point.
KEN MYERS
Ken Myers is the author of All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes and is the founder of Mars Hill Audio, an organization that exists to “produce creative audio resources that encourage Christians to grow in obedient wisdom concerning the cultural consequences of our duty to love God and neighbor.” He began his career working with National Public Radio for whom he was, among other things, arts and humanities editor for the then-new program, Morning Edition. A budgetary crisis in 1983 cost Myers his job, and he eventually accepted the position of executive editor at Eternity magazine, a well-established evangelical monthly. In that position, he sought to develop a form of Christian journalism that was more rigorously engaged with the specific cultural phenomena and larger cultural trends of our time.The pursuit of that vision has resulted in his establishing Mars Hill Audio in 1992. Mr. Myers lives and works on a large wooded lot in the rolling countryside of central Virginia.
ANDREW KERN
Andrew Kern is founder and president of the CiRCE Institute, the founding author of The Lost Tools of Writing, a co-author of the best-selling book Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America, which he wrote with Dr. Gene Edward Veith, and is on the board of The Society For Classical Learning (SCL). Since establishing CiRCE as a research and consulting service to classical educators, Andrew has trained teachers, led board retreats, and assisted with institutional development and start up in over 100 schools since 1996. He has been directing the CiRCE Institute full time since the summer of 2000. Andrew helped start Providence Academy in Green Bay, WI in 1993, where he served as “Lead Teacher,” Foundations Academy (now Ambrose School) in Boise, ID, where he served as Director of Classical Instruction from 1996-2000, The Great Ideas Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he served as Headmaster from 2001-2003, and The Regent Schools of the Carolinas where he served as Dean of Academics from 2006-2008. He and his family live in North Carolina.
JOHN MASON HODGES
John Mason Hodges is a conductor, lecturer, composer, and writer. He holds degrees in music from University of Maryland and Indiana University, and worked as a professional conductor from 1983-2009. He lectures on the subjects of aesthetics, classical education, and music, and writes for various publications on the arts. He held the position of Associate Professor of the Arts and Culture at Crichton College where he taught classes on worldview, history of music and visual art, and reader’s theater; directed theater productions, and was founding director of the Institute for the Arts and Cultural Apologetics. He is founder and director of the Center for Western Studies, and serves as scholar-in-residence for the National Fellows movement.
DR. E. CHRISTIAN KOPF
Dr. Kopf has earned degrees from Haverford College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has taught Classics at the University of Colorado, Boulder since 1973 and lived for some of the past 25 years in Rome as teacher at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. He is editor of a critical edition of Euripides’ Bacchae (Teubner, 1982), and the author of over 100 articles and reviews on scholarly and popular subjects. He is the author of the acclaimed book, The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition and has contributed to several books including Vital Remnants and Doomed Bourgeois in Love.
DR. JAMES TAYLOR
Dr. James Taylor, author of the acclaimed book, Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education, has been a teacher of English and American literature, Humanities, Western Civilization, and Philosophy of Education, for over twenty years, in private schools and public colleges, including Hillsdale College where he was Chair of Education and a teacher of English and American Literature, Humanities, Western Civilization, and Philosophy of Education. He received his M.A. from Southern Illinois University and is a graduate of Kansas University’s Integrated Humanities Program. Dr. Taylor was the 2008 recipient of the Paideia Prize, presented for lifetime contribution to classical, Christian Education.
MARTIN COTHRAN
Martin Cothran, the author of Memoria Press’ Traditional Logic, Material Logic and Classical Rhetoricprograms, is an instructor of Latin, Logic, Rhetoric, and Classical Studies at Highlands Latin School. Martin holds a B.A. in philosophy and economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an M.A. in Christian Apologetics from the Simon Greenleaf School (now a part of Trinity University). He currently serves as senior policy analyst with The Family Foundation of Kentucky. His articles has have appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Louisville Courier-Journal, and various other newspapers, as well as on radio and television. He has also served as a registered agent (or “lobbyist”) at the Kentucky State Capitol for over 12 years and has served on various state committees that oversee education policy, where he continues to be an influential voice on education policy issues. Martin is the managing editor of “The Classical Teacher” magazine, which also serves as Memoria Press’ product catalog. He and his family live in Danville, KY.
ANDREW PUDEWA
Andrew Pudewa is the director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing and a homeschooling father of seven. Presenting throughout North America, he addresses issues relating to teaching, writing, thinking, spelling, and music with clarity, insight, practical experience, and humor. His seminars for parents, students and teachers have helped transform many a reluctant writer and have equipped educators with powerful tools to dramatically improve students’ skills. Although he is a graduate of the Talent Education Institute in Japan and holds a Certificate of Child Brain Development from The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, his best endorsement is from a young Alaskan boy who called him “the funny man with the wonderful words.”
ANGELINA STANFORD
RODNEY MARSHALL
Rodney J. Marshall is Founder of Coram Deo Academy in Dallas/Fort Worth, and President and Owner of Marshall Education Group. He enjoys association with the Institute for Classical Schools, the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, the Society for Classical Learning and the CiRCE Institute. He also serves as a columnist for Practical Home Schooling Magazine and other publications. Under his leadership CDA grew from 0 to one thousand enrollees in ten years, and from minimal start up funds to a multimillion-dollar non-profit generating a surplus during a recession. Prior to this Rodney pastored, served as President of a public policy activist organization, and then oversaw twelve international field stations serving one thousand seven hundred Christian schools on six continents. During his time abroad Rodney regularly spoke to convocations numbering up to five thousand, and met with high-level officials to persuade them of the value of Christian education and freedom of choice in education. Marshall Education Group provides innovative solutions to start, grow, and improve classical, Christian and home schools through professional training and advisory services, a Classical Learning Management System, The Headmaster Lecture Series and a free BLOG and newsletter.
DR. CAROL REYNOLDS
Professor Carol Reynolds is much sought-after public speaker who combines her insights on music, history, arts, and culture with her passion for arts education to create programs and curricula, inspire concert audiences, and lead art tours to places like Russia, Austria, Germany, San Francisco, and Broadway. For more than twenty years, Carol was Associate Professor of Music History at The Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She is the author of the curriculum Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Arts, History, and Culture. She makes her home in Bowie, Texas.
DR. JOHN PATRICK
Dr. John Patrick currently serves as president of Augustine College where he also teaches on the history of science and medicine. In 2002 he retired from his position as Associate Professor, Clinical Nutrition, Departments of Biochemistry and Pediatrics, at the University of Ottawa. He has done extensive research into the treatment of childhood nutritional deficiency and related diseases, holding appointments in Britain, the West Indies, and Canada. He has lectured widely at universities in Britain, North America, the former Soviet Union, and Africa, speaking on moral issues in medicine and culture and the integration of faith and science.
CHARLES CLENDINEN
George Sanker currently serves as Headmaster of The Covenant School in Charlottesville, VA. George has worked in education since 1996 and served as the principal of two charter schools in Washington, DC and Longmont, CO. He started his career in education working in private Christians schools where he was a history and theology teacher for middle and high school students. George graduated from Colgate University with a BA in political science. After Colgate, he served his country as an officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he specialized in analyzing data pertaining to Southeast Asia. He also received a MA in Religion from Reformed Theological Seminary. George is currently ABD in sociology at the University of Virginia. He and his wife Jeannette live in Charlottesville with four of their children—Nicholas (9), Jonas (8), and Lukas (5), Thomas (2). Their fifth child, Kendrick (17), is a boarding student at a private college prep school in Bethesda, MD.
BUCK HOLLER
Buck Holler has recently joined the CiRCE Institute to serve as the new Program Director, focusing specifically on the development of The Lost Tools of Writing, the Apprenticeship, and the CiRCE Online Academy. Buck earned his B.A. in bible and theology with a minor in biblical languages from Shasta Bible College in Redding, CA (2001). In 2003, he received his M.A. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, MA where he majored in Old Testament studies. Buck spent 3 years serving as a high school youth director in his hometown of Red Bluff in Northern California, where he also began teaching middle school students. From Northern California, he moved to NYC to teach at the Geneva School of Manhattan from 2006 to 2009. He and his family now reside in Winterville, North Carolina where he currently teaches Composition and Latin at Christ Covenant School. Prior to entering the world of Classical Education Buck grew up training reining cow horses and competing in the sport of Rodeo riding bulls and bucking horses. He preserves his rugged past with an outdated mustache.
MARCIA HARRIS BRIM
Marcia Harris Brim is the author of Ancient Polytheism and Christian Theology: A Comparative Study for Youth, the latest of seven books on theology, worldview, and western civilization written for classical homeschooling families. She teaches worldview workshops to 10 to 13-year-olds around the country. after nine years of study and reflection on Genesis 1-3, her first book for adults, soon to be completed, uses narrative theology to explore the implications of the first text of scripture on the whole of scripture. Her thesis is that the grand purpose of the Bible’s story is to make free-willed human beings who through God’s provision became like their Maker. Her bachelor’s degree is in Theology from Multnomah University. She lives with her husband and three children in Northern California.
DR. PAULA FLINT
Dr. Paula Flint has worked in the field of education for 40 years. Her formal education includes a B.A. in elementary education and English from the University of Northern Colorado, a M.Ed. in special education (emotional/behavioral disorders and counseling) from Rhode Island College, and a Ph.D. in special education from the University of North Texas where she also taught in the Special Education Department. Dr. Flint has additional training in the Great Books discussion method, classical/Christian education and administration, Waldorf school techniques, Charlotte Mason educational training at the Ambleside Schools International, and training in numerous special education techniques and interventions. She has taught students in special education with emotional/behavioral disorders, ADHD, learning disabilities, and dyslexia. She has also worked in private practice as an educational diagnostician, dyslexia remediation specialist, and behavior specialist. Dr. Flint is the founder and head-of-school at the Flint Academy in Arlington, Texas which follows the Charlotte Mason educational philosophy, serves PK – 12th grade, and includes students with learning differences such as Autism/Asperger’s, dyslexia, and ADHD.
DEBBIE HARRIS
Deborah Harris graduated from Azusa Pacific Univeristy with a Bachelor’s in Liberal Studies (with a California K-8 certification) and has worked for a decade as a classroom instructor, primarily in the elementary grades. She has taught at Foundations Academy in Boise, Idaho and Hope Academy in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since 2002, Deborah has focused on mentoring teachers in classroom management strategies and classical techniques. She currently serves as the Dean of Teaching staff and Curriculum at Hope Academy. She lives in Oakdale, Minnesota with her husband and two sons.
HEATHER SHIRLEY
Heather spends her time speaking, teaching, and supporting parents who are seeking to implement a classical Christian education at home. Each spring and summer, Heather shares her own family’s educational journey, and challenges parents to examine the bankruptcy of modern education and to consider the sufficiency of classical Christian education. An engineering graduate from University of Louisville, Heather’s continued love of learning brought her to the CiRCE apprenticeship in 2009 where she continues to grow as a classical Christian educator. As Executive Director of Classical Conversations MultiMedia, Inc., Heather leads a gifted production team in developing resources and training materials for Classical Conversations, a nationwide network of homeschooling communities. Heather and Ed live in North Carolina where they homeschool their three children Daniel 15, Emily 13, and Caleb 11.
LEAH LUTZ
Leah Lutz is the founder and director of a Christian classical homeschool tutorial near Santa Cruz, California. Covenant Family Tutorial is a Christ-centered classical educational support program established to enhance, augment, and encourage the work of Christian homeschooling families. CFT offers high-quality academic classes and learning opportunities for homeschooling families, approaches its offerings from a distinctly Christian worldview, and incorporates the methodology of the Christian educational model. Leah is a CiRCE certified Master Teacher and an expert on The Lost Tools of Writing composition curriculum.
KNOW THYSELF | JULY 2011
