One might wonder what happens in the Templeton Honors College during the summer months when students return home. Do faculty and staff return to their home libraries, grow long untidy beards, and spend hours without end reading Plato, Dante, Wittgenstein, or Gaita?
As it turns out, summer can be one of the busiest times for Templeton staff and faculty, running our summer sessions of the Masters of Arts in Classical Teaching and the Summer Scholars Program back to back . Here’s a rundown of the excitement that is to come for the Templeton Honors College, Summer 2019.
First off, we’d like to welcome Dr. Kathryn Smith who will be joining us as the Director of the Masters of Arts in Classical Teaching. Dr. Smith is coming from the University of Dallas where she taught literature and directed the Arete Summer Programs. She is a graduate from the Braniff Graduate School Institute of Philosophic Studies where she studied under the nationally recognized leader in humanities, Louise Cowan. Dr. Smith enjoys mountain biking, skiing, hiking, tennis, and swimming and is currently moving in to her new home with her loving husband, Bryan, and her beautiful three-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.
“I, as the Director of Recruitment, was thrilled to welcome the incoming Cohort of 2019 to Eastern’s campus for ‘Day One;’ one of the first times that accepted Templeton students gathered on campus to choose classes and prepare for the exciting adventure that will be theirs for the next four years. These students will be taking ‘The Good Life’ course as well as ‘Western Civilization I: Greece and Rome’, ‘Old Testament’, and ‘Templeton Chorale.’ These classes are taken by all Templeton first year students, and as such, have been taken by those cohorts that have come before. Participating in and taking these classes are experiences that these students will be privileged to share as they become part of the Templeton Honors College community, classes that they will look back on fondly and appreciatively. It has almost been a full year since I have returned to Eastern University, and I continue to be blessed by this rich community and the people within it.”
In addition to welcoming the incoming cohort of 2019, we’d like to welcome all of you to come and join us as we hear from Cheryl Swope on June 25th as she talks to us about what a classical education has to offer children with special needs. Cheryl Swope is the author of Simply Classical: A Beautiful Education for Any Child, creator of the award-winning Simply Classical Curriculum, and our keynote speaker for the Masters of Arts in Classical Teaching program.
Furthermore, several Templeton professors will be teaching this summer in our Summer Scholars Program, Divorcing the Devil: The Moral Vision of C.S. Lewis. We are excited to share with you all that this year, both US and international high schoolers will come to campus to get a taste of the wonderful community and delightful challenges the Templeton Honors college has to offer. We can’t wait for Tony Lawton’s performance of his one-man adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce on July 22nd. One of my favorite Summer Scholars traditions is having students write letters to themselves at the end of the course, reminding their future selves all they learned here and the friendships they have formed and the people they will keep in touch with after returning home.
Meganne Beach, current Director of Recruitment at the Templeton Honors College, graduated from the Honors College at Eastern University in the class of 2017, double majoring in Communication Studies and Spanish. After leaving the Honors College, Meganne spent a year working in Spain, and is now once again part of the Templeton community.