The Forum The Official Newsletter of the Honors College

Dear Alumni, Friends, and Family of the Honors College,

I hope that this fall edition of The Forum newsletter finds you well! While the leaves have been falling around campus, our community here in the Honors College has been growing. This semester we admitted the largest incoming freshman class in our history, at a staggering 49 new members, launched our Master of Arts in Classical Education, and last, but certainly not least, broke ground on the renovation of St. Leo’s classroom 301. This new state-of-the-art seminar room will enable our Honors College to educate students in the true, the good, and the beautiful for many years to come. Thank you for your support of the Honors College—your generosity makes the continued flourishing of our community possible!

While fall is an exciting time for our Honors College, it also gives us an opportunity to reflect on what true community entails. Over the summer, the sophomores went on retreat at Hilton Head and the juniors studied abroad in Ireland. This semester, students saw Handel’s Messiah, read Plato’s Republic through the night, celebrated class gatherings, went on a fishing retreat, and saw the Gastonia Honey Hunters play ball! On an academic note, faculty and staff listened to a lecture by Dr. Joseph Bottom and attended a symposium at Lee University. Please welcome Susan Brandolini (Honors ‘23), Truman Hale ('25), Mary Amanda Weaver ('27), Luke Pullin ('27), and Marino Alexander ('27) as Staff Editors of this newsletter. Thank you for your continued support of the Honors College and we hope that you enjoy seeing what we have been up to!

—Christopher Mee, Class of '24, Student Editor of The Forum

Construction Updates

Dear Alumni, Friends, and Benefactors of the Honors College,

At the end of the fall semester, I am always struck by the sudden contrast of a flood of academic activity followed by an almost instantaneous peace and quite that settle over the campus when students depart for Christmas celebrations at their homes, and our monastic community here at the Abbey persists in the quiet rhythm prayer and work. It is a time of recovery and a time to reflect upon all the good work that has been done and all the promised good that the future holds in store.

And there is a tremendous amount of good to be grateful for this year. The Honors College welcomed its largest class so far of 49 freshmen students. This growth in numbers would not be possible without the steadfast work in recruitment and interviewing of Dr. Thomas Varacalli. His work in sifting through scholarship recipients has allowed us to grow responsibly in a fashion true to the culture and nature of the Honors education and community. For the first time, all of the freshmen are now required to take two semesters of a classical, spoken language. The love of learning a new language, encounter with another culture, and appreciation of grammatical precision are invaluable supplements to the Honors College curriculum and we are grateful to Dr. Nancy Llewellyn and Fr. Matlack for their cultivation of this in our freshmen.

The delight in learning inherent to our curriculum has been, as always, supplemented with community activities outside of the classroom, including bonfires, all-night Republic readings, Honey Hunter’s games, fly-fishing, Junior-Freshman/Senior-Sophomore parties, study abroad in Ireland, the Sophomore beach retreat, lectures, conferences, and more. These kinds of activities are not accidental but deliberately cultivated fruits of the study of the great books in the Catholic intellectual tradition. Ultimately, the love of truth bears fruit in communion, and the most unlimited good that friends might share in common is the truth. The work of the Honors College is a work of friendship: communion in the truth. Every teacher and every student shares in this work of love, and I am grateful to every member of the community who has contributed to this.

To the end of furthering the space we have for community on campus, we have at long last begun the work of restoration in St. Leo’s 301, the classroom in which our beloved teacher, Dr. Gene Thuot, worked and taught for so many years. This renovation is the first phase of our project that will culminate in the restoration of Grace Auditorium itself. We hope that you will consider contributing to this project in the coming months as the work unfolds. I’d like to thank Dr. Christine (Basil) Boor for her continued guidance of this project.

This physical project on campus is a visible reflection of the growth that the Honors College has continued to experience. To the end of furthering classical education, Belmont Abbey has recently announced it’s launching of our Masters in Classical and Liberal Education program:

We’ve partnered with the CiRCE Institute as well as the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (ICLE) to make this more widely available to students who’ve completed certificates in Classical Education through these programs. The program will be housed in the Honors College and led by the endowed Vilma György Pallos Chair in Classical and Liberal Education. The position was made possible by the generous donations of Dr. Laszlo Pallos, who named the position after his mother. More exciting announcements will come soon!

Speaking of growth, I’d like to welcome Ms. Susan Brandolini (’23) to the team as our director of recruitment and operations. This much needed position has been made possible by a grant from the Bradley Foundation, and we are truly grateful for her presence and good work furthering the mission of the Honors College. She will be helping the Honors College team in various ways administratively and in recruitment.

On the horizon is our February 23-24, 2024 conference on Flannery O’Connor featuring talks by Dr. Farrell O’Gorman and Dr. Jerome Foss of St. Vincent’s College.

Finally, it has been publicly announced that I will be stepping into the role of interim provost here at Belmont Abbey as the college undertakes a search for a full time occupant of that position. Please keep me and Belmont Abbey College in your prayers as I step into this position.

Merry Christmas and Happy New year to each and to all,

God bless,

Dr. Joe Wysocki

Learn more about the launch of our new Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education in Belmont Abbey's newest Conversatio episode below:

Dr. David Williams joined the faculty of the Abbey in the Fall of 1999 and has been here ever since. Dr. David Williams earned his bachelor’s degree in government from Georgetown and his master’s degree in Christian ethics from Boston College. Dr. Williams is a dual-PhD, earning doctoral degrees in both political science and theology from Boston College. Dr. Williams has chaired the theology, politics, and philosophy departments respectively over the years. Dr. Williams has taught courses for the Honors Program, Institute, and College, teaching HO301 Biblical Texts I this fall and will be teaching HO307 Modern Science and Philosophy in the Spring.

Where did you go for school and what was your education like?

While I thought that it might be interesting to enter the School of Foreign Service, which was very popular at Georgetown, after realizing that pre-hostage was a poor career path (it was the 1980s), I opted for a major in government. During my sophomore year at Georgetown I was glad to be received into the Catholic Church. There I studied political philosophy under Fr. James Schall and studied American political thought with Dr. George Carey. Like most of my peers at the time, I entertained the idea of law school, but meeting law students disabused me of the idea so I turned to graduate school. I applied to several places, but I really wanted to go to Boston College and learn from Fr. Ernest Fortin. Once at Boston College, I only needed five extra courses to get a master’s in Christian ethics so I did just that. My first dissertation topic was the natural law ideas of the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez and my second was in the theological modes of reading scripture (which was later published). I actually finished my PhD in political science in the first week of August and began my PhD in theology the third week of August. Pursuing a PhD in theology, I got to work with professors like Fr. Matthew Lamb and Dr. Pheme Perkins who were very formative for me.

What was the most influential class you’ve ever taken or taught?

I would say reading Augustine’s Confessions with Fr. Lamb, studying medieval political thought with Fr. Fortin, and studying Paul with Dr. Pheme. I took every course that Fr. Fortin had to offer, so those two and a half years with him tend to blend together. All in all, I would say that these three courses present a good blend of my academic influences.

What brought you to the Abbey and why did you decide to teach here?

This is actually quite interesting. The Abbot's niece Peg was in the history graduate program at Boston College and we ran in the same circles. By January of ‘99, she told me that the Abbey was left in the lurch for theology professors, but I could not leave Boston in the middle of my work there. When I heard, I applied for the fall of 99’ and interviewed on March 23rd. Abbot Placid, then academic dean, took me on as an Assistant Professor of Theology.

What are your favorite classes to teach and why? Do you have a favorite Honors class to teach?

While in the theology department, I enjoyed teaching the course on the Apostle Paul. After all, my minor area was in the New Testament in graduate school. I loved working with Paul’s letters and the scholarship around them. I also did a special topics course in Augustine one semester, but found it to be too fast. Regarding Honors classes, I have only taught Biblical Texts, Modern Political Philosophy, and Modern Science and Philosophy. Of those, I most enjoy teaching the Biblical Texts course. By the time I get Honors students, sophomores typically, they have some background in the tradition, and I get to add the scriptural and early modern perspective. It is interesting watching things start to integrate for students. Before I was Dean I taught theology and always had some courses in the Honors institute. Being away for five years shows me how much I miss being in the classroom with students. The Honors College draws different students from the rest of the college, so I always enjoy hearing their perspectives.

The shift from Honors Program to Institute to College has deepened and extended the fundamental search for wisdom at the heart of its mission. These changes have been a difference of degree and not of kind. What we are doing now is growing the vision of the Honors Program as Dr. Thuot established it. While the sapling and the tree are recognizably the same, the tree flourishes in ways that one may not have anticipated simply because it has had more time to grow.

What is one lesson every student should learn while in college?

Students need to learn that administrators are people too! If you have a concern, please swing by my office in person rather than email me. I’ve learned that as an administrator your primary interaction with students becomes their complaints. People surely need to manifest their problems, but this makes me love the classroom more. More seriously, as a student, enjoy the time that you have to read, think, and talk. It is unlikely that you will ever have more time to do these things than you do now.

If you could grab lunch with any biblical figure besides Christ who would it be?

I am wavering between Luke and Paul. Paul is kind of a “type A personality,” so I think I’ll go with Luke. I’ll take my stories of Paul second hand. Luke does more of what I do, being a Greek scholar and a historian. Following in the tradition of historians, Luke gives a preface, explaining his method and that he hopes to put the story of Jesus in order. If you ask me, this is a kindly-worded diss on the other gospel writers.

If you could learn any new subject or skill, what would it be?

A skill that I do not have and that interests me is data science and statistics, because I work with those things all the time. Maybe teaching the early moderns course has done this to me, but I increasingly enjoy the beauty of mathematics that I did not see when I was younger. Furthermore, I would also really like to get my languages up to snuff. There is this idea in the ancient church of the vir trilinguis, the trilingual man. Back then, he was somebody who could speak Latin, write Greek, and read Hebrew. Latin was the predominant language of scholars, Greek was the language of the Septuagint and New Testament, and Hebrew was used for reading the Old Testament.