The Legion Project

Matthew Pincus

I have a BA in classics from Columbia, which I received in 1993. In 2003 I received a PhD from U.C. Berkeley in Classics. I wrote a dissertation on Roman elegy (particularly Propertius). I taught for two years after receiving my PhD, for one year at Cornell University, where I was a visiting fellow in the Society for the Humanities, and for one year as an adjunct and visiting scholar at Columbia. After that, I worked for a year as a management consultant, where I specialized in insurance. I then went to law school. After law school, I served as a law clerk for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and joined Debevoise & Plimpton. I am currently an associate attorney in the tax department at the London office of Debevoise. My years as a close reader of Roman poetry have undoubtedly made me a better attorney (and reading the Internal Revenue Code is not dissimilar to reading ancient poetry – the closer you read it, the less sense it makes). For me, the skills I learned in graduate school in terms of reading closely, writing clearly and articulating coherent arguments, have helped me in my career. The pedagogy training I received at Berkeley is consistently useful in explaining complicated issues to clients.

Anna Andresian

After earning a B.A. in Classics from Brown University in 2000, I started my career as a middle and upper school Latin teacher. I taught for four years at the Rocky Hill School in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, then headed to the University of Oxford, where I earned a M.St. in Latin & Greek Languages and Literature in 2005. I taught at the Sage Ridge School in Reno, Nevada from 2006-2011, then moved to Denver, Colorado for a year and taught at Regis Jesuit High School. I spent the summer of 2012 teaching for Paideia's Living Latin in Rome program, then landed at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey for what turned out to be my last year as a classroom Latin teacher. In the winter of 2012/2013, two senior boys taught an after-school programming class, which I attended as their student. I became completely addicted to programming and started working on a web app (www.magistrula.com) to help my students practice grammar for my classes. I was completely thrilled by the experience of using code to create pedagogical resources, and at the end of that year I decided to pursue a career in education technology. After spending three months at the Recurse Center in New York City, I started my first tech job at Amplify in 2014. A year and a half later, I moved to San Francisco and now work as a frontend engineer at AltSchool. My experience as a Latin teacher challenged me to come up with a position on why Latin is worth learning, and reflecting on that question shaped my perspective on why anything is worth learning. Learning is about experiencing elegance in the world around us, perceiving and uncovering and nurturing our strength as interconnected individuals, seeing patterns and wholeness and resonance in people and things that exist far apart from each other in time, space, or perspective. The particular things I've learned and thought and wondered in my experience as a classicist have shaped my sense of the world, and I'm grateful that I will have that forever even though Classics is no longer my profession!

Adrianne E Pierce

I received a BA in Classics from Swarthmore College and an MA and PhD in Classics from Johns Hopkins University. During grad school at JHU, I taught there and at Loyola University in Baltimore.

I am currently Head of Classics and Allstrom Chair in Foreign Affairs at Hackley School in Tarrytown, NY. I have always loved teaching, especially Classical literature, and I am thrilled that there are still students interested in studying Latin, Greek, and all the other fields encompassed by the Classics. I am fortunate this year to be teaching not only the AP Vergil and Caesar course, but also Elementary Greek; I also have two independent studies in which I have been reading Horace, Catullus, and now, for the first time in my Classics career, Vitruvius, whom I am really enjoying. One of the aspects which makes my current job, which I have held for 23 years, so appealing is the opportunity to teach the students when they are just starting out in 6^th grade and then to meet them again in the high school and see the students they have become.

I still enjoy reading novels set in the ancient world, particularly those by Lindsey Davis and Robert Harris. Once a Classics geek, always a Classics geek.

Deborah Fryer

I started learning Latin in 10th grade. I loved it because it was challenging, and I love a good challenge. It felt so mysterious and cryptic. And when I cracked that secret code, it filled me with such joy. I remember vividly the first time I was able to read and understand Ovid's Metamorphoses. I was 15, and I was so moved by the myths that I cried. The cadence of the verses, the haunting visual images, the heart-breakingly beautiful metaphors filled me with awe. I threw myself headlong into the Classics. I dropped out of high school and moved to a Greek island, where I became a weaver's apprentice. The day I arrived, I spoke Ancient Greek to the cab driver. He wondered where I had learned such archaic vocabulary. I went on to study Classics in college (Oberlin) and then to earn Masters Degrees in Classics (from Columbia and Princeton) and a PhD in Classics and Comparative Literature from Princeton.

After graduate school, I followed my passion for languages, mythology and studying other cultures, into the field of filmmaking, where I worked as an Associate and Field Producer for NOVA, Frontline, PBS, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, Turner Broadcasting, American Experience, National Audubon Society, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. In 1999, I began producing, directing, and writing films for the History Channel, MSNBC, Warren Miller Films, and HGTV. In 2004, I founded LILA FILMS, a full-service video production company in Boulder, Colorado. LILA FILMS specializes in telling stories about the interconnectedness between people, public health, and the environment. I have filmed in in Peru, Mali, Kenya, Tanzania, Panama, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, Italy, India, Bali, Thailand, Belize, England, as well as throughout the United States. I have filmed in countries without electricity and running water and in high tech operating rooms, in prisons, classrooms, laboratories, and community gardens. Wherever the story is, I will follow it. My independent film SHAKEN: Journey into the Mind of a Parkinson’s Patient was broadcast on public television to millions of viewers and won numerous awards, including the 2007 Humanitarian Award, two Telly Awards and a CINE Golden Eagle Award.

I am grateful for the solid foundation that studying the Classics has given me. It's like a skeleton key that opens every door. I use my Classics education every day in my work as a filmmaker--and I also used it daily in the two-year stint I spent getting a post-baccaluareate pre-medical degree (mostly for the vocabulary, which was the easiest part for me). Whether I'm researching a story or interviewing experts about a wide range of subjects, speaking a foreign language, writing a script or editing a film with layers of metaphor, I feel like I am always drawing on those skills I learned as a young student. Making a film is a lot like translating a text. At first, it seems impossible, impenetrable. You get a few of the pieces in place, then you get the gist of the whole, and soon, after staring at it long enough, the whole timeline comes together and there's a wonderful story there, just waiting to be revealed. You patiently move between the subtle details of every word/frame and zoom out to the greater context of the whole. You feel the rhythm, the pacing, the emotion, the cadence. And then miraculously, something magical pops out before your eyes that was there all along, just waiting for you.

Jon-David Hague

Public high school in Louisiana may not seem a place to spark a love of Latin and Greek, but it did just that for me. And it likely won’t be a surprise that who teaches you Latin and Greek at the start matters for how far you’ll go with it. Lucky for me, I had great ones. Three years of Latin and one year of Greek in high school planted all the seeds needed for a double major in Greek and Latin at Luther College in Decorah, IA, where I read broadly among the corpus but took keenly to Aristophanes. From the cornfields of Iowa I headed not West, not yet, but East to Boston University where I matriculated through their post-baccalaureate PhD program focusing on ancient drama and especially comedy and Aristophanes, working there with Jeffrey Henderson. I taught for a stint at Austin College in Sherman, TX but having finished writing my dissertation in Berkeley, CA, I felt a pull to return. There I began a career in college textbook publishing that would span 15 years. A classics training and the PhD positioned me well to work with authors in a variety of disciplines, guiding their writing in a such a way that both appealed to the broadest audience and drove the business plans of the companies I worked for, like McGraw-Hill and Cengage. At BU, I remember Meyer Reinhold telling me once, one day working with him at the Institute for the Classical Tradition, that “classicists must know everything from the primordial slime to Constantine!” And so we do, I think, and then some. I am now VP of Solutions for a learning technology startup, called Cerego, in San Francisco. Whereas we hear often how AI and machine learning will replace many human jobs in the near future, classicists wield an important weapon of breadth and scope of the human condition, allowing them to negotiate that human space and build from it in a way passing the Turing Test will never do.

Sarah Ruden

I received a B.A. in Classics from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Classics from Harvard University. I currently work as a freelance writer, journalist, and translator. Previously, I was a lecturer in Classics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, a tutor for the South African Education and Environment Project (an education-enrichment nonprofit in Cape Town), a communications director for a medical informatics firm, an in-house writer for an NGO, a copyeditor, a creative writing teacher, an online writing coach, an editor, and an investigative reporter stringer. All that was part-time, as my real calling was always to write. A collection of my poetry, Other Places, won the South African Central News Agency Literary Award, and my poems appear in The National Review and religious periodicals. I made use of my experience in publishing several book-length translations of pagan literature to write Paul among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time. A new translation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, a Classical Greek tragedy trilogy, is forthcoming soon from The Modern Library. Augustine’s Confessions: A New Translation and The Face of Water: A Translator on Beauty and Meaning in the Bible will both appear in 2017. I was a scholar in residence for three years at Yale Divinity School and a Guggenheim fellow, and I am now a visiting scholar at Brown University. Classics is absolutely essential to my work. My knowledge of Greek allowed to read the original New Testament, and that got me started as a critic of scripture translation. My Classics background allows me to speak with almost unique authority on all kinds of religious, cultural, and political questions—especially now during this crisis of worldwide religious radicalism.

Kyle Johnson

I received a B.A. from Reed College and a Ph.D. from New York University. At each institution, I was fortunate to find mentors who shared a conviction in the importance of the discipline and broadened my vision of what it is capable. Upon graduation, I was inspired to found the Classical Language Toolkit, an open source software library which brings AI tools to the Classical world—beyond that of just the Greeks and Romans and reaching the expanse of ancient Eurasia. I have since made my career merging philology with computer science. Professionally, I am a Data Scientist specializing in several branches of Artificial Intelligence, namely Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. In my work as a programmer, researcher of human thought, and as a leader in the workplace, I leverage the skills I developed while studying the classics. At its best, Classics encourages precision of language, clarity of thought, inductive reasoning, and cosmopolitan ethics. As a melding of the sciences and humanities, my studies prepared me for work environments to which the distinction is foreign. Classics is the Ur–discipline. We do well to keep this in mind, as there are few intellectual pursuits which do not have their origin in the study of Classical antiquity. If this is the case, then Classicists should not shy from a multidisciplinary world.

Julie Tanaka

My introduction to Classics started when I was an undergrad math major at San Jose State University. Wondering why I needed to know about Homeric warriors, the antics of the Olympians, and five different Greek words for oak in Hesiod, I was inspired by a couple of professors and soon found myself switching majors to Humanities--the closest thing to Classics at SJSU--taking lit and history classes about Antiquity and topping those off with Greek and Latin. The next thing I knew, I was PhD-track in Classics at the University of California, Irvine. Realizing Classical philology wasn't my thing, I earned a MA in Classics from UCI and then went on to complete a PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley. My research focused on the reception of Graeco-Roman Antiquity, especially ideas of the Roman Empire in the medieval successor empires (Holy Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire). I held a couple of visiting professorships and a postdoc before deciding that the tenure-track wasn't what I wanted to do, so I went back to get a Master's in Library and Information Science from the University of Washington. Now, I put all of this--Classics, History, and Library and Information Science--to use as Curator of Rare Books and Western European History Librarian at the University of Notre Dame in nothwestern Indiana. 

Classics provided me with the breadth of knowledge about ideas, institutions, language, culture, and so much more that filtered through aspects of many societies, and it also allowed me to see how influences from beyond the Mediterranean interacted with and influenced the development of western European ideas and institutions. All of this gives me the background that plays a key role in my daily work, whether it's teaching a class from ancient Mesopotamia to present, looking at modern receptions of ancient literature, or continuing my research related to German humanists appropriating aspects of the Roman Imperial tradition to craft a history for Germany.

Robert Koonce

I received a B.A. in Classics from Case Western Reserve University. Afterwards, I moved to Florida, where I got my start in fundraising as a Development Officer at the Catholic Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee. I then worked for University Hospitals, Western Reserve Land Conservancy, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. I am now the Chief Development Officer at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland, which means that I am responsible for all fundraising, marketing, communications, and volunteer efforts for fourteen service sites in Cleveland, East Cleveland, and Cleveland Heights, Ohio. I also serve on the boards of the Cleveland Archaeological Society, Lake Erie Ink: A Writing Space for Youth, and on the parish council of Communion of Saints Catholic Parish. For my current job, I have a simple task—to convince people of means to share their wealth and save the lives our city’s neediest children—that requires a fusion of many disciplines: accounting, sales, marketing, public relations, strategic planning, behavioral psychology, and human resources. While the opportunity to parse meaning from a dense line of Thucydides has yet to come across my desk, I would argue that I learned public relations from Caesar’s campaign in Gaul, behavioral psychology from Euripides’ Bacchae, and creative strategy from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. But more to the point, I learned bravery from Thermopylae, leadership from Pericles, the strength and weakness of the collective from the Pnyx, argument from Cicero, and resourcefulness from Odysseus. Antigone continues to stir me to do what is right, not necessarily popular. Classics train the mind, form the character, and fill a person with depth. I rely on that every day in my job, community, and family life.

Mark Christopher Mash

I earned a BA in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MA and PhD in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I also studied in the summer programs of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the American Academy in Rome. As a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill, I served as a teaching assistant for mythology and taught elementary and intermediate Latin. After four years in residency at my graduate program, I accepted a Latin position at Leesville Road High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2002. Leesville Road is a public high school in the Wake County Public School System, the largest school system in North Carolina and the 15th largest in the United States. In order to teach in a public school, I initially received a lateral entry teaching license and later completed a program to become a certified Latin teacher in the state of North Carolina. Four years later, the Latin program at my school had grown to the point that we needed another full-time Latin teacher, and my wife Carrie, a BA in Classics from UT-Austin and MA in Classics from UNC-Chapel Hill, took this position. We have been teaching Latin I-AP to over 300 students a year on the 4x4 block schedule, and our Latin Club is one of the NJCL “Century Clubs” with over 100 members.

Classics has informed work I do as School Improvement Chair and as a member of various school and district committees. My classical training helps me to be detail-oriented and to see the big picture in analyses of school and student data. It also helps me to think more empathetically about students, teachers, and other stakeholders, and their journeys of life and education. In 2016, I represented Leesville Road High School as one of 13 Teacher of the Year Award finalists in a district of more than 10,000 teachers. In addition to my teaching and professional work in education, I have also recently published essays on Herodotus for a Routledge monograph (2016) and Histos Supplement 6 (2017). I am currently working on an entry for The Herodotus Encyclopedia (forthcoming, Wiley 2018). I stay in regular contact with colleagues in the Classics Department in Chapel Hill, and have served as an informal advisor to graduate students who are considering teaching in schools. Classics has been a constant in my life since I started studying Latin as a sophomore in high school. I strongly believe in the value of high-quality Classics instruction for all, and especially for younger students.

Monica Greco

Francis R. Hittinger

I received my A.B. in Classics (Language Intensive Greek and Latin) from the University of Chicago in 2007.  Hooked on the fascinating cultural, historical, and philosophical avenues that my immersion in Classics and the great books opened for me, I went on to complete my M.A. in Romance Languages (Italian) from the University of Notre Dame (2010) and an M.Phil. in Comparative Literature and Society, with a focus on Medieval Italian Studies from Columbia University (2013). I received my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Society, with a focus on Medieval Italian Studies, from Columbia in 2016, after completing a dissertation on Dante’s political works in the context of medieval political economy. 

In grad school, I taught Italian language courses for many years. As I neared the end of my doctoral studies at Columbia, I was also given the opportunity to teach the great books of politics, ethics, and philosophy in Columbia’s core Contemporary Civilization program—first as a preceptor and then as a postdoctoral lecturer. As my first post-doc year of teaching drew to a close, it was time to make a decision about my future. Given the realities of a permanently shrinking and uncertain academic job market, I investigated high school teaching and decided to pursue a career as a teacher because I have always loved teaching and mentoring students. 

Today I am a Latin and Social Studies teacher at Mountain Lakes High School, a high-performing public school in the northern New Jersey suburbs of New York City. I teach all levels of Latin, a World History class, and serve as the debate coach for our forensics team. My teaching life is personally and professionally satisfying and challenging. I work in a positive professional community with great colleagues.  I am also excited to be developing a new honors level curriculum to make the great books of Western ethical, political, and economic thought—from the ancient to modern world—accessible to high school juniors and seniors. The most rewarding aspect of my job is that I am able to devote my time and attention fully to the instruction of the subjects I love. Every day I see the tangible difference I’m making in the lives of the next generation as I pass on my own formation in Classics and the humanities.  The feeling I have in fostering their intellectual curiosity and engagement can only be described as awesome. Finally, I still have ongoing research projects related to the political and economic history of the middle ages and beyond, but I am now liberated to pursue them on my own time outside strict disciplinary boundaries and without the stressful and often punishing demands of academia’s “publish or perish” culture.  

There’s no denying that the decision to leave academia after years of study dedicated to and achieving a doctoral degree can be very difficult – especially given the cultural pressures within degree-granting institutions for Ph.D. graduates to remain in academia and pursue a tenure-track professorship at all costs. However, it’s been great to become part of a growing community, through Paideia Institute’s Legion Project, that both celebrates and encourages the amazing and diverse career paths open to and successfully embraced by Classicists outside the ivory tower! I’m honored to join the ranks of fellow Legionnaires.

Ariane Schwartz

I received my B.A. and M.A. in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and my Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard University. I am currently working for the management consulting firm McKinsey and Co., where I am on the course operations team for McKinsey Academy. After finishing graduate school, I taught for several years at Dartmouth, UCLA, and Harvard. During and after graduate school, I always made sure that I worked on initiatives that would leverage my skills beyond the classroom. I have served as Assistant Editor for the I Tatti Renaissance Library (Harvard University Press), co-founded the Society for Early Modern Classical Reception (a SCS affiliate group), and have been involved in several digital humanities initiatives, including Quantitative Criticism Lab (now based at UT-Austin) and the new Online Public Classics Archive (Paideia Institute). These projects that took me outside of the classroom allowed me to develop my project management background as well as my work with collaborative and cross-functional teams. I remain connected to Classics through my continued involvement in these initiatives today, and Classics continues to be a part of my professional and personal life in many ways. Both my background running a variety of Classics courses (from the small seminar to the 300-person lecture) and my philological and historical training have prepared me well for my current work developing and running learning programs for clients in the business world.

Christopher L. Caterine

Moss Pike

As an undergraduate, I studied Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University, but after taking a few Classics courses, including Classical Mythology, I became fascinated by the ancient world. At that point, I decided that I wanted to continue studying Classics in graduate school and see where it could take me. I lacked sufficient language experience, though, so I enrolled in UCLA’s Post-Bacc program to take more Greek and Latin courses, and thanks to the affinity I had with the department there, I ultimately ended up staying to complete my MA in Classics and PhD in Indo-European Linguistics with a focus on Greek and Latin historical linguistics.

About halfway through the dissertation process, I had the opportunity to teach Latin at the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. In the course of teaching there for 8 fantastic years, I became deeply invested in education and pedagogy, including technology and design, and so I recently moved on to the Vistamar School, where I am the Director of Educational Technology and teach computer science, while overseeing our emerging STEAM program.

Despite not currently teaching anything directly related to the field, my experiences with it continue to inform nearly everything I do professionally. More than anything else, my study of Classics has taught me how to approach identifying and working toward solutions to problems through careful scrutiny of evidence, while also keeping people and culture at the center. This approach has helped me to embrace the design thinking process with my current work in education by focusing on people. Moreover, I learned that there’s an art to the way analyses and solutions are presented and that it’s critical to find one’s own authentic voice in sharing ideas.

To this day, I feel deeply connected to Classics for all these reasons. Whether I’ve been continuing my own work with the Greek and Latin languages, thinking about pedagogy, or even considering how teaching coding languages is similar to Greek and Latin instruction, I’ve kept myself as immersed in the work as possible. And I’ve also developed a greater appreciation for the echoes of the Classical world within our own, especially in literature.

Lisa Mallen

I received a B.A. in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies from Penn State, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College.  Shortly after I finished graduate school I welcomed two children, which gave me time to reflect on my career.  Before graduate school I had taught at the Princeton Latin Academy and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of teaching Latin, Greek, and archaeology to middle school students, although I always knew I wanted to earn higher degrees.  While in graduate school, specifically during my year at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, I realized that I enjoyed teaching far more than researching.  When the opportunity arose, I accepted a position at Linden Hall, a boarding and day school for girls in Pennsylvania.  There I primarily teach Mediterranean archaeology, but I also teach Latin, Greek, ancient history, and a 7th grade course that explores the roles and cultural importance of women in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome.  At the secondary level, I feel that I am making a significant impact by teaching younger students how to analyze information critically and how to think for themselves.  I also strive to demonstrate the significance of Classical languages and civilization in popular culture.  For example, we explore the Latin meaning behind many of the spells in Harry Potter and we discuss the cultural significance of Classical gods and monsters featured in the Percy Jackson novels.  I continue to be engaged in the professional side of archaeology as a member of the AIA, through which I attend lectures.  I am also working on a book that reflects my lecture notes for the 7th grade course.  My favorite aspect of teaching at the secondary level is that my young students are incredibly curious and the intimate setting of small classes allows them to share their ideas so that I learn from them as much as they learn from me.  Over the years I have learned that Roman mummy portraits are the original “selfies,” that the Greek andron is just a more intellectual “man cave,” and the Arkteia at Brauron was a more socially informed summer camp!  I am very happy that the choice I made to teach at the secondary level has proved to be as rewarding as I had hoped.

Matthew Neuburg

My degrees are a BA in Ancient Greek from Swarthmore College (1975), an MA in Classics from Yale University (1977), and a PhD in Classics from Cornell University (1981). I embarked upon the standard cursus honorum, teaching Classical language, literature, culture, and related topics in various universities. All that time, I was also using and programming computers; I wrote my PhD dissertation on Cornell's mainframe, and I produced some educational software for my Classics students using tools such HyperCard. In 1996 I had a midlife crisis and left Academe, going into computer programming full time. Over the years I've performed various corporate and freelance jobs, including writing some online software manuals; I'm best known for my books written for O'Reilly Media, including Frontier: The Definitive Guide, REALbasic: The Definitive Guide, AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, and most recently, Programming iOS 4 and its successive annual editions (up through Programming iOS 10 so far). Thus I've been both a programmer and, more importantly, a teacher of programming; those interests and abilities grow directly out of my Classics training. I would maintain that the part of my brain that writes a computer program, or wrestles with a programming interface to figure out how to write error-free code or accomplish a particular task, is exactly the same part that works out the meaning of a sentence of Plato or Cicero. And I knew from my college days, when I had the benefit of some particularly spectacular teachers (especially Gil Rose), that I wanted to teach. Writing books that teach programming has thus been a direct and natural culmination of my earlier life in Classics.

Thomas McCulloch Cirillo

I received a B.A. in Latin & Greek from Kenyon College in Gambier, OH, and both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. I am currently in my third year of teaching Latin and Greek at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, TN. We have a very active Classics program at Montgomery Bell and students are required to take Latin in eighth and ninth grade. With this being the case, I am still very connected with the Classics and the discipline is a major part of my professional life. In the past few years, I have learned a great deal about why learning the languages and culture of the Greeks and Romans is important for middle and high school students. I hope that students in my classes will be as interested in Latin and ancient history as I was at their age, but I know that this won’t always happen. Even if students aren’t captivated by declensions and conjugations in their own right, all students can benefit from taking Latin because in doing so they “learn how to learn.” The organizational skills and the development of systematic thinking associated with success in Latin help students in all academic subjects. Classics is the original interdisciplinary subject and it’s exciting to see students draw connections between what they learn in Latin and what they are studying in a science, social studies, or English class. A familiarity and appreciation of the Classics also enhances the involvement of Montgomery Bell students in various extra-curricular activities. I coach two middle school athletic teams (football and track & field) and I work closely with our community service club as a faculty mentor. Ideas, notions, and knowledge garnered from a Classical education, for example, the history of the Olympics or Plato’s theory of justice, are important for our students as they work together as teammates and become thoughtful, humane members of the wider Nashville (and global) community.

Colleen Rice

I graduated from Colgate University with a B.A. in Classics and from the University of Wisconsin with a Ph.D. in Classics. Since graduating, I have been teaching Latin for Oak Meadow, a progressive, distance learning school based in Brattleboro, Vermont. I teach Latin to incredible students from around the world. I work with each student individually, providing support and evaluating their work as they make their way through their Latin courses. People often ask me how I came to study Classics in college and the truth is that I have been fascinated by ancient civilizations since I was a kid. In high school and college, I was fortunate to have Latin teachers who mentored me and fostered my love for Latin language and Roman culture. I love teaching Classics to young people because I am able to spark the same wonder about the ancient world. As a teacher at Oak Meadow, I also have the opportunity to design new courses for the high school curriculum. I look forward to the challenge of designing courses that are not only fun and engaging, but also help my students understand the importance and relevance of studying the history and culture of the ancient world.

Hermann Sadun Schibli

I got a late start in my higher education. After three years in the US Army, I started college at the age of twenty-three with the support of the GI Bill. I attended Wheaton College, Illinois, for two years and then transferred to Loyola University of Chicago, from which I graduated with a B.A. in Classics summa cum laude. For graduate school I went to the University of Michigan where I earned a PhD in Classical Studies in 1984. My first teaching position was at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. I chaired the Classics Department, taught Latin, Greek and Humanities, and worked on turning my dissertation into a book. For the latter project it was a great help to be awarded a fellowship to the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC; I was relieved of teaching duties for a year, could concentrate solely on research and complete my book (Pherecydes of Syros, published by Oxford University Press in 1990). At Saint Anselm College I received tenure, but then, in 1992, I resigned, having decided to move back to my native Germany to function as the successor of my uncle in the family business. This proved to be a drastic mistake. I was neither happy nor truly successful in the retail business. Fortunately, on the side I was able to teach one Latin seminar pro semester at the nearby University of Passau. As an adjunct professor I was not paid but I did receive library privileges which enabled me to finish a second book on a Neoplatonist philosopher (Hierocles of Alexandria, Oxford University Press 2002). In 2009 I finally broke with my uncle and the family business and returned to the United States. Despite numerous publications I could not find a teaching position, presumably because I was too old. I took a job as a part-time librarian at Saint Anselm College and also published a couple of dictionary and encyclopedia articles on Hierocles. In addition, I do freelance translation work, mostly German to English but the occasional Latin diploma as well, and I tutor Latin and Greek, whereby it has been a special pleasure to teach enthusiastic adult learners. Others have sufficiently attested to the value of a classical education for the skills it imparts. Suffice it to say that Greek and Roman literature, philosophy and history have accompanied me all my life and I have never regretted the time and energy I devoted to classical studies. My only regret is that I abandoned a full-time academic career in classics. Now I fly fish and “study to be quiet” (I Thessalonians 4.11).

Bryan Charles Daleas

While earning my BA in Classics at Hamilton College, I knew I wanted to teach, and I knew I wanted to dive more deeply into my own learning. I completed MA and PhD degrees in Classical Studies at Indiana University, during which time I attended the Classical Summer School at the American Academy in Rome. Following graduate school I served for three years as Lecturer in Classics at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, before returning to my home state of Connecticut where I embarked upon a teaching career in secondary education. After brief appointments at the Taft School and St. Paul Catholic High School, I entered the realm of public secondary education at Windsor High School, where I taught Latin and advised the NJCL Latin Club for two and a half years. It was a wonderful change from academia to be so enthusiastically received and appreciated. In 2005 I assumed a position at the Classical Magnet School in Hartford where I taught Latin and Greek for 7 years before working in central office as Teacher-in-Residence for World Languages from 2012 to 2014. I then returned to Classical as assistant principal for one year prior to my current position as Director of World Languages for Hartford Public Schools. My work in Hartford, particularly at Classical, has been deeply informed by my training in classical studies. I developed Latin and Greek curricula and provided professional guidelines for embedding classical themes across content areas. Additionally, the presentational skills in both speaking and writing acquired from my time in academia serve me well in my position as a curriculum director of a large public school district. It is unusual that a classicist becomes a district administrator, and I feel we have a great deal to contribute from our training with respect to language use, appreciation and deep understanding of interdisciplinary work, and the experience of advocating on behalf of our discipline. Advocacy is an important part of the work we do in public education, and I actively participate in statewide initiatives such as the Connecticut Seal of Biliteracy, for which I advocated publicly before the State Education Committee. Although I no longer maintain ties to academia, I never lost my philosophical and intellectual connections with the discipline of Classics following graduate school and I continue to maintain affiliations with several professional organizations; for a number of years I was on the board of directors for the Classical Association of Connecticut, serving a term as president. Although I support all languages and language teachers in Hartford Public Schools, I maintain a special affinity for classics and my fellow classicists.

Michael Zimm

I received my PhD in Classics from Yale University. Once I realized it was time to make a career pivot, I decided that I wanted to join a tech startup. I was drawn to working in a warm, dynamic, non-hierarchical, and intellectually rich environment. Although the tech world is largely associated with STEM, I realized that an aptitude for writing, big picture thinking, and deep learning are skills that all organizations could benefit from. Training in historical analysis, linguistics, and research are high demand, low supply skills in today’s world. A company full of creative minds should, at the very least, want to hear an elevator pitch about how a Classicist could drive value. When I first met Peter Sena, the founder and chief creative officer of Digital Surgeons (a full-service design and marketing innovation agency that builds brands and businesses), he told me that he had never heard of Classics. In our first 20 minutes of meeting, I talked to him about the origins of Greek tragedy and the god Dionysus (I’m not joking). After 20 minutes, he cut me off and said “I have no idea the ‘how’ or the ‘what’ you will do at Digital Surgeons, but I see the ‘why’.” When I asked Peter a couple months later why he hired me even though I lacked traditional training in tech, he said “because of your passion. Passion is an asset.” Most classicists are passionate people. OWN your passion. Don’t be afraid to share it with curious minds. Don’t be ashamed to explain why you spent years studying the ancient world. As an assignment, Peter asked me to analyze a client’s website and write up a report about how it could be improved. Classicists, we have spent years analyzing and writing papers about the nuances of verbs, nouns, and adjectives of highly inflected languages. We can easily apply our intellectual tools to help companies solve challenges that require nuanced thinking and creative solutions. Peter hired me as a creative strategist which involves article creation, SEO (search engine optimization) keyword reports, inbound marketing, along with other responsibilities. Now that I am in tech, I have an opportunity to do more for the study of the Greco-Roman antiquity than I could ever have done within academia. My tech buddies love hearing stories about the rise of the Athenian empire, the fall of the Roman Republic, and the origins of democracy. Do I still use my knowledge of the classics in my current occupation? ALL THE TIME! My wonderfully curious colleagues call me the professor. I get invited out to lunch to discuss Indo-European etymologies, Homeric thumos, and, more generally to explain “what are the classics.” I have even been called into meetings to etymologize words. Classics has been siloed off in the academy for too long. The time has come for us to venture into the professional world and show the value of a classical education.

David Berger

I received my B.A. degree from Yale, where I took four years of Latin and majored in philosophy; I went on to receive a Ph.D. degree in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. degree in Classics from Brown University. In 2010, after serving as a visiting assistant professor in the Classics Department at Wheaton College, I joined the faculty of The Sage School, a small, preK-8 school for gifted students in Foxboro, Mass. I’m the only Latin teacher at the school, and Latin is a required course in each of the three upper grades, so I have the pleasure of forming three-year relationships with nearly all of the students. Because the school attracts bright children, I get asked a wide range of questions in class. When I field a question cleanly and bring a smile to a student’s face because of something I learned in graduate school, it’s a rewarding feeling.

Sarah Nix

I graduated with a B.A. in Classics from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. in Classics from Brown University. After graduation, I took a two-year position in the Department of Classics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. One of the most appealing aspects of this job was the chance to work with the MAT Latin students, to play a part in supporting Classics at the secondary level. My own years of public high school Latin had been formative ones: my teacher studied with Reginald Foster in the summers and imbued me with a passion for the language and for this place called Rome. During grad school, I had also taught a Latin class at Moses Brown School for a couple of years, which showed me the rewards of working with younger students. From UMass, I moved to Miss Hall’s School, where I currently teach Latin and Greek. Additionally, for the past ten years, I have spent much of the summer in Rome, teaching both undergraduate and high school students for programs through Brown University. This work, often in conjunction with art historians and archaeologists, has broadened my connections to the ancient world and, thus, my teaching.

Emily Beugelmans

I earned a Bachelor's degree in Classical Civilization at the University of California, Los Angeles. I then spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania's post-baccalaureate program before matriculating to Vanderbilt University. I graduated with a Master's degree in Classics in the spring of 2013, and after spending a couple years at the University of Chicago in a doctoral program, I decided to take the leap and launch my alternative academic career. I'm currently working at a boutique lifestyle public relations agency in Oakland, CA where I'm enjoying using the analytical skills I developed in my academic career to build engaging press strategies for our clients. Public relations is one of the most humanistic fields in the business world. It boils down to understanding how people communicate and crafting a compelling narrative, both of which are fundamental to Classics. Also, the rigorous nature of studying Latin and Greek has some unexpected perks--once you've learned the Greek verb system, figuring out how to program spreadsheets is much less daunting! I still feel very connected to the discipline of Classics, and not just because I tutor Latin on the weekends. I've found that studying Classics has dramatically impacted the way I approach the world, both in my professional and personal life. As a Classicist, you have the privilege of preserving an important part of our collective history, and regardless of what you choose to do as a profession, you have helped keep that knowledge alive. I also think there's a profound sense of comfort that comes with seeing how your own life fits into the vast mosaic of human experience.

David Rowland

I earned a B.A. in Classics from Texas Tech University. Latin fascinated me from the first time I opened a copy of Wheelock's Latin, but I was hooked when I read my first pages of Cicero. Studying Classics left a deep impression because it helped explain so much of the world around me. Latin and Greek created a window into how language works that I had not appreciated previously through English. The ancient voices of poets and philosophers, clear and alive in their original tongues, added depth to how I viewed the world. I now work as a software developer with Cerner Corporation. My Classics education benefits me on the job every day. The combination of analytical and creative thinking required to create things with code is the same that is needed to translate a heavily inflected language. I also work on a team, and communicating clearly and simply about complexity can be the difference between hitting a deadline, and not. I would not be as effective at my job without my Classics education, and without Classics, I would not be as thoughtful about the life I have outside my job.

Andrew Lear

I received a B.A. in English from Harvard University, an M.A. in Creative Writing from the City University of New York, an M.A. in Classics from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduate school, I was a Mellon Fellow at the Columbia University Society of Fellows and a Visiting Assistant Professor at four places: Florida State University, DePauw University, Pomona College, and New York University. A couple of years ago, I founded a tour company called Oscar Wilde Tours (oscarwildetours.com) that does gay history tours—local tours in New York City and multi-day tours in Europe. My tours are about the history of sexuality, the study of which started with Ancient Greece and still depends on it. Most of my tours either focus on or include classical elements. Unsurprisingly, the tours of Greece and Italy focus on ancient sexualities (as well as those of the Renaissance in Italy), but many of the other tours include at least one museum with important classical erotica (the Louvre, the British Museum, etc.). I am also developing a BBC series on gay history, in which the classics will play an important role. I am still quite connected to the discipline: an article of mine recently came out in a Routledge multi-author, I have a contract for my next book (although having left academia I am not sure I will ever find the time to write it!), I am reviewing books for Journal of Hellenic Studies and Classical World, and I am giving a talk at the Archaeological Institute of America. Although it has not always been easy, many major scholars supported me through the years and remain good friends of mine.

Patrick Lake

I received a B.A. in ancient Greek & Latin from Boston University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Fordham University. Upon finishing my coursework in graduate school, I took a position teaching Classics at The Hill School, a boarding school in Pennsylvania. Working at a boarding school like The Hill has allowed me to engage in the values which inform the study of the Classics in the fullest way possible: I live with my students, dine with them, coach them, and teach them in the classroom. Over lunch, we may debate to what extent the early government of the American Colonies reflected democratic Athens (this was our conversation just the other day!); on the playing fields, we work to realize the classical ideal of a sound mind in a sound body; in the classroom, we give life and breath to the languages and literature of the ancients. During my time teaching at the secondary level, I have remained engaged in the broader world of Classics by publishing regularly, serving on the board of CAAS, and traveling nationally and internationally to attend conferences, do research, and organize study tours for my students. Each spring, I take my upper form students abroad. Over the years, we have toured Italy, Turkey, Greece, France, and the UK. These trips offer a final capstone to their efforts in the classroom. Standing in Socrates’ Agora or Augustus’ Forum, my students take the final step in understanding and synthesizing their experience in the Classics.

Steven Stack

I received an A.B. in Classics (Henry Bean Scholar for Classical Studies) from the College of the Holy Cross, where I was also pre-med. Afterwards, I attended Ohio State University and obtained my M.D. and completed residency in Emergency Medicine. My career has included practicing emergency medicine and serving as Emergency Department Medical Director in Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Additionally, I have been very active in medical professional societies, this culminating in my election as the 170th President of the American Medical Association (AMA). During my extended medical education and early years in clinical practice, my study of Classics waned as a consequence of the long hours and limited time. However, in my mid-thirties I began reading classical historical fiction, which led to me reading more traditional Greek and Roman history books. Now that I am better acquainted than ever with classical history, I am mixing in some of the ancient authors themselves (in translation) and hope one day to restore my proficiency in Latin and/or Greek in order to enjoy these texts in the original language. In my medical leadership and health policy roles, I frequently engage with senior federal, state, and private industry leaders to improve health and health care delivery in our nation. My classical education has given me a rich foundation in humanism and behavioral precedents and patterns throughout classical antiquity. This perspective has been an invaluable resource, one that influences my thinking and choices on a regular basis. And—something that is of equal value—my sustained and deepening study of the classics has become a source of great personal enjoyment and comfort. In the Holy Cross library, there is inscribed a quotation from Cicero that reads “Haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant,” which loosely translates to, “Studying in youth sustains delight into old age.” I couldn’t agree more!

Patrick Tyler Haas

I received a B.A. in Classics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an M.A. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati, focusing on Bronze Age Archaeology. After finishing graduate school, I decided to pursue a career in international nonprofit work. I started at the Hero Group, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit consulting firm, providing organizational research and analytical work for our clients. My passion for education then led me to Tandem, Partners in Early Learning, an organization that supports literacy and early education throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. My time with Tandem exposed me to the importance of working at a mission-oriented nonprofit and the rewards of providing valuable resources to underserved communities. I am currently a Development Operations Associate at Room to Read, a nongovernmental organization that promotes literacy and girls’ education in developing nations throughout Southeast Asia and Africa. Classics played a major role in my career path choice, and it provided me a range of skills that have been major assets in my professional life. For me, a classical education is at its core about learning to quickly understand and analyze new information. Everyday I use quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques that I learned from my work in Classics and Archaeology. (As it turns out, it’s a lot easier when you don’t have to dig the data out of the ground first!) Most of all, Classics instilled in me a love of knowledge that drives me to never stop learning and to help share the gift of education with as many people in the world as I can.