The Forum The Official Newsletter of the Honors College

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

Stability is one of my favorite Benedictine hallmarks. In an age of constant change and gratification, stability anchors us in those permanent things: God, family, country, and our beautiful alma mater, Belmont Abbey College.

Many changes occurred over the course of this academic semester. Throughout the spring, I served as the Interim Provost. In May, Dr. Thierfelder appointed me as the permanent Provost. In this role, I oversee the college’s academics, admissions, and student life. Dr. Christine Boor was selected as the inaugural holder of the Vilma György Pallos Endowed Chair in Classical Education. She now oversees our online Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education degree and its partnership with the CiRCE Institute, the Institute for Classical Liberal Education, and Veterum Sapientia Institutum. Under her leadership, we already have fourteen enrolled graduate students for the fall semester.

Despite these changes, the Honors College witnessed great stability as we continued several of our customs. The junior class traveled to Ireland for four weeks, while the sophomore class had a splendid time reading Shakespeare’s Tempest at Hilton Head Island. Dana and Anthony Klein ‘24 organized our annual Honors ball. The junior class planned our annual graduation party for the Class of 2024. Christopher Mee ‘24 coordinated a Senior-Freshman party. Marino Alexander ‘27 scheduled several bonfires on campus. As a college, we once again went to the Belk Theater for a beautiful rendition of Tchaikovsky and Brahms. Dr. Boor hosted the women of the Honors College at her new house for breakfast. Dr. Thomas Varacalli sponsored several Men’s Office Hours on Fridays. Perhaps most excitingly, the Honors College undertook the renovation of St. Leo’s 301, our old seminar room; it is expected to be completed by August.

The stability of the Honors College, during my transition to provost, was also made possible by the college’s faculty and staff. Professor Elisa Torres Neff is now the Director of Schola, and she has done a superb job organizing our largest Schola summer camp. We expect about 80 high school students to come to campus this July. Dr. Varacalli has overseen the admissions process to the Honors College. He interviewed over 150 high school seniors; largely because of his efforts, we expect 50 Honors students, our largest freshman cohort yet. Ms. Susan Brandolini, our Director of Recruitment and Operations, was invaluable as she fostered new partnerships and programs with our alumni, friends, donors, and benefactors.

I especially want to thank everyone who has financially supported us this semester. Due to your generosity, we met our $10,000 Founders Day challenge. I especially want to thank the Bradley Foundation, Jack Miller Center, and John William Pope Foundation for their generous grants. We are also thankful for the CiRCE Institute, the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, Veterum Sapientia Institutum, the Society for Classical Learning, Great Hearts Academies, Valor Education, Ascent Classical Academies, Regina Caeli, and Duc in Altum for our various partnerships.

Please continue to keep both Belmont Abbey and the Honors College in your daily prayers. Thank you for your continual support, and please know that you will be in the prayers of our faculty, staff, and students.

God Bless,

Dr. Joseph Wysocki, Dean of the Honors College at Belmont Abbey College

Professor Elisa Torres Neff has taught for the Abbey for the past three years as a Professor in the Honors College and has recently taken on the role of Director of the Summer Schola Program. Before teaching at the Abbey, Professor Neff was an alumna of Belmont Abbey (2017), having graduated with degrees in Theology and English. She is currently earning her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Dallas. Professor Neff teaches classes on Dante and Modern Philosophers in the Honors core curriculum.

Q: What led you to the Abbey as an undergraduate?

A: My decision to attend Belmont Abbey College came after a long period of deliberation. It had been three years since I graduated highschool, and at that time I believed I would never formally further my studies. I spent two years after my high school graduation discerning Religious Life with a particular community, followed by months of traveling across the country in pursuit of the “perfect monastic society.” Being full of a youthful (though earnest) idealism, coupled with a sense of frustration with the noise of secularism, I sought solace within closed walls, quite literally a "Benedict Option."

However, like a certain Maria von Trapp, I came to realize that the monastery is not an escape from the world, nor is it a protection against the effects of our fallen nature. I left my enclosed community and wandered back to my home in Charlotte, North Carolina. I searched for a job, and having acquired a certain knack for videography, found work with TAN Books working specifically with their “Catholic Courses.” What I had chosen for technical reasons resulted in the entire reorientation of my life’s trajectory.

My work consisted in the video production of various college-level courses given by academics from around the country. I filmed, edited, and wrote articles for courses that included, “Aristotle’s Ethics” by Dr. John Cuddeback, “Catholics in the Public Square” by Dr. Bradley Birzer, and “Metaphysics” by Dr. Gregory Doolan. The many hours laboring over this material began to have a deep effect on me. However, it was not until filming Professor Anthony Esolen’s course on Dante’s Divine Comedy that I began to rethink my decision to not attend college. Never before had such sweetness “poured into my soul through the ears” (Republic, 411a5). I began to question many notions I held regarding virtue, man’s relation to his city, the purpose of education, and the nature of justice. My time with Catholic Courses initiated these intellectual quandaries which ultimately led me to the doors of Belmont Abbey College.

Belmont Abbey was located just fifteen minutes from my home in Charlotte. The choice to attend the Abbey was a mixture of locational convenience and the vague awareness I had of their sincere commitment to the Liberal Arts. I knew upon entering that my decision to attend college was not motivated by career choice. A more primordial desire began to draw me in, one which Aristotle identifies as natural in each man: the desire to know.

Q: What did you study and what were some of the most significant ideas and authors you encountered at the Abbey?

A: I began as a theology major, though I was quickly enamored by such authors as Virgil, Dostoyevsky, and Flannery O’Connor. I picked up another major in English Literature as well as minors in Christianity and Culture, Medieval Studies, and Political Philosophy.

While studying Theology I encountered the writings of Thomas Aquinas, Josef Pieper, Louis Dupré, and Joseph Ratzinger. I learned that by maintaining a distinction between reason and revelation, theology can more firmly build from a philosophic foundation, and faith is protected against the talons of rationalism. Through my study of poetry and literature an entire way of seeing opened up to me: the narrative structure of temporal reality, the tension between free-will and fate, man’s relationship with the divine, the greatness of human nature, and the depravity and bondage of our condition. I considered for many years the life of a Christian to be in contradiction to the city. However, upon reading Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, I was led to consider the truth of his observation that all social virtues dry up when man cuts himself off from political duty. While the question of man’s relationship to his city continues to present a challenge to me, I am convinced that the alternative to political piety––namely individualism––is incompatible with the Good Life.

I ended my time at the Abbey with the study of political philosophy. While it was present throughout, it was not until my junior and senior year that I began to wrestle with the questions raised by such modern thinkers such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau. The challenge they presented to my Thomistic and Aristotleian commitments were important. I began to sort out important distinctions between the Ancients and the Moderns, and wrestle with many tensions such as those between Jerusalem and Athens, poetry and philosophy, and the philosopher and the city. I quickly became convinced that the answer to many of my questions were philosophic in kind, and while I had not initially planned upon continued graduate studies, all roads were leading in that direction.

Q: Where did you attend graduate school? What was your experience?

A: I attended the University of Dallas and am still currently enrolled in their Institute for Philosophic Studies, earning my PhD in Philosophy (ABD––All But Dissertation!). UD is an abundant source of wisdom and wonder. There are countless lectures to attend, reading groups to participate in, and an unbroken stream of rich dialectical conversation. It is, as Charlotte Mason would say, an intellectual feast.

Most professional academics are drenched in ideology, and through over-specialized jargon, seek to mask their commitments and thereby protect themselves from honest criticism. The University of Dallas seeks to push against this current through the constant free exchange of ideas. Each semester the philosophy, politics, and literature PhD students take a core class together. By returning to the origins, we work together to ponder and consider the great questions of Western Civilization, beginning with Homer and ending with Nietzsche.

Q: Why did you choose to return to the Abbey to teach? What do you find special about the Honors College?

A: It has been an absolute joy to teach in the Honors College, it is precisely what we’re doing in this program that drew me to return to the Abbey. Since my time here, I am becoming increasingly convinced that many of our cultural and societal tensions have their origin in the malformation of the life of the mind, and it is my firm belief that an authentic liberal education can guide a cultural restoration to common sense. The curriculum of the Honors College is robust and unabashed in its avowal of “the best that has been thought and said,” but perhaps more importantly its “atmosphere,” which Charlotte Mason considers to make up the greater part of one’s education, fosters a genuine spirit of wonder, conviviality, and intellectual courage. The Honors College avoids the ceaseless and circular dialectic of many secular Great Books programs (where, as in Dante’s Limbo, souls are described as living eternally in empty desire), but also avoids dogmatic and ideological didacticism. We are not afraid to pursue the truth wherever it may be sought, because we believe that in the last analysis such a pursuit will always lead to Christ.

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

A: The truth of their own ignorance! College is a much kinder environment to encounter one's ignorance, than, I suppose, later in life, five years into marriage, when your toddler asks such daunting questions as, “why is there something rather than nothing?” “what is so absurd about an infinite regress?” or “if you were given a ring that made you invisible, would you act justly?”

Q: Tell us a little bit about your new position as Director of the Summer Schola Program. What is your favorite Schola experience?

A: As the new director of Schola, I’ve been working closely with Dr. Wysocki learning the ins and outs of everything that goes into making Schola the life changing experience that it is for our students. I began teaching Schola in 2017, right after graduation. It was our first year running Schola. In addition to helping with seminars, I was also a student counselor. Working Schola is an extremely rewarding experience. Students are eager, the texts are magnificent, and the opportunity to teach alongside our faculty is both edifying and delightful! The hike to South Mountain always leaves me deeply impressed. Students come as total strangers both to the Abbey and to each other, but you would never believe this to be true given the deep and fast friendships that are clearly manifest during that hike.

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

A: Agriculture, so that I can join the mass migration of homesteaders in their attempts to live off the land, in true Wendell Berry-like fashion! Being able to operate a broader range of power tools would also be sublime!