Andrew Kern is the Founder and President of CiRCE Institute. He has also helped found Providence Academy, Ambrose School, Great Ideas Academy and Regents Schools of the Carolinas. Andrew is the co-author of Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America, The Lost Tools of Writing and The CiRCE Guide to Reading. Andrew is also a consultant and founded the CiRCE apprenticeship.
E. Christian Kopff was educated at St. Paul’s School (Garden City NY), Haverford College and UNC, Chapel Hill (Ph. D., Classics). He has taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, since 1973, and most currently as Associate Director of the Honors Program. He has edited a critical edition of the Greek text of Euripides’ Bacchae (Teubner, 1982) and published over 100 articles and reviews on scholarly, pedagogical and popular topics. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, he has received research grants from the NEH and CU’s Committee on Research. The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition (ISIBooks, 1999) is widely cited by Classical Christian educators. He translated Josef Pieper, Tradition: Concept and Claim (ISIBooks, 2008; St. Augustine’s, 2010) and contributed the Introduction to Herbert Jordan’s translation of Homer’s Iliad (Oklahoma UP, 2008).
The four liberal arts of the Quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy – have been central to the Western vision of education since the time of Plato and Aristotle. They actually provide the tools of learning for many other areas of study and historically undergirded the birth of modern science. This seminar will explore how holding true to the classical character of these subjects in our teaching methods unleashes the power and wonder the ancients obviously believed them to have.
Ravi Jain graduated from Davidson College with a bachelor’s degree and interests in physics, ancient Greek and international political economies. He worked at various churches, received a master’s degree from Reformed Theological Seminary and later earned a graduate certificate in mathematics from the University of Central Florida. He began teaching calculus and physics at The Geneva School in 2003, where he has developed an integrated double-period class called The Scienti c Revolution. In this class, students read primary sources like Galileo and Newton in order to recapitulate the narrative of discovery while preserving the mathematical and scientific rigor expected of a college-level treatment. During his tenure there, he co-authored The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education. He has given over 100 talks and workshops worldwide on topics related to education, mathematics and science. He has two young boys, Judah and Xavier. After the duties of the week have been discharged — usually by 8:53 on Saturday nights — he enjoys his few remaining hours with family, friends and his wife, Kelley Anne, whom he met in Japan.
Richard Gamble is Anna Margaret Ross Alexander Professor of History and Political Science and Association Professor of History at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. Before coming to Hillsdale in 2006, Richard taught for twelve years in the history and honors programs at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida. In 2003 and 2010, he was a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund's Collee, Cambridge University. He is the author of The War for Righteousness: THe Progressive Clergy, the Great War, and The Rise of the Messianic Nation, author of the chapter on World War I for the forthcoming Cambridge History of Religions in America, and editor of The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human being. He specializes in the history of the American civil religion and is currently writing a book on how America became the "city on a hill." His essays and reviews have appeared in The American Conservative, Orbis, Humanitas, The Journal of Southern History, Modern Age, The Intercollegiate Review, and The Independent Review. He serves as a contributing editor for The American Conservative and serves on the board of trustees of The Philadelphia Society and The Academy of Philosophy and Letters.
