Yorktown University  

Although Arthur Pontynen was trained as a specialist in East Asian art and culture, the focus of his academic research research and teaching centers on a cosmopolitan but now commonly neglected choice. We can either seek a violent aestheticism in our lives, or we can seek truth, goodness, and beauty. In the face of a dominant yet failed Modernist-Postmodernist ideology today so common in the academy, Dr. Pontynen advocates development of the critical language by which we can pursue the truth. The conflict between relativism and the pursuit of truth is developed in Dr. Pontynen's “For the Love of Beauty: Art, History,” and the “Moral Foundations of Aesthetic Judgment” (Transaction Publishers, 2006).

Charles Miller, a resident of Tucson, Arizona, is a student of the Western frontier. He earned a BA (1969) from University of Maryland, College Park, an MA (1970) from the University of Texas, Austin and a Ph.D (1990) from the Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio. Dr. Miller is the author of two books, “Stake Your Claim! The Tale of America’s Enduring Mining Law,” and “The Automobile Gold Rushes and Depression Era Mining.” Other publications by Dr. Miller include “The Spirit of the Pioneers Still Rules; the Automobile Gold Rush in 1930s Arizona,” Winter 1997, Journal of Arizona History and “Arizona’s Automobile Gold Rush,” in History of Mining in Arizona, vol.III. The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals relied heavily on Dr. Miller’s “Stake Your Claim!,” in its decision of the case of US v. Shumway.

David Dunn Mulroy earned his Ph.D. in Classics at Stanford University. After graduating, he taught at Princeton University and, since 1973, at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Mulroy is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Scholars and Vice-President of the Wisconsin Association of Scholars. In 1996, he received the Barry M. Gross Memorial Award from the National Association of Scholars for “distinguished service to the cause of academic reform” as founder and Director of the Certificate Program in the Study of Liberal Arts through Great Books at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Mulroy is the translator of "Early Greek Lyric Poetry," "Horace’s Odes and Epodes," and "Catullus’ Poems". His essays include “Politics and Great Books,” “The War Against Grammar,” and “Alphabetic Literacy ands the Revitalization of the Liberal Arts.”

Master of Architecture in Civic Design, (University of Pennsylvania, 1958), taught at Temple University, Florida International University, and was Professor of Architecture at Miami-Dade College, where he taught courses in Architectural Design, History, Theory, Communications, Ecology, and Man and Environment. He has served his community with work on the White House Conference on Domestic Affairs, the State of Florida Historic Preservation, the American Association for State and Local History, and is a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He was the recipient of grants from the Florida Citizens Committee for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has served in an elected capacity as Councilman in Miami-Dade County, and is President of ADA Research and Compliance Analysts. He has appeared as an Architectural expert on local as well as national television, and is about to embark on his 24th architectural tour of the European continent.

For thirty-one years Dr. Kalpakgian has been a professor at Simpson College in Iowa, teaching courses from Advanced Composition to Shakespeare, Chaucer, The English Novel, The Literature of Western Civilization (Great Books), and The Classics of Children's Literature. has been honored with a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar Fellowship and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, and in summer, 1985, he was invited to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on Children's Literature. In 2007 Dr. Kalpakgian became Professor of Humanities and the Trivium at Wyoming Catholic College.

Dr. Gerald Gunderson of Yorktown University will be discussing with Dr. Bishirjian the History of American Entrepreneurship. Professor Gunderson has published numerous academic papers, including studies of the cause of the American Civil War. the demise of the Roman Empire, and models of entrepreneurship. He has authored columns in more than 20 newspapers in the United States, including the 'Wall Street Journal,' and he has worked with national professional associations concerning entrepreneurship, economic and business history, private enterprise systems, economic education, and public policies. He served as President of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, and is now Editor of 'The Journal of Private Enterprise.'