Higher Education Symposium:
Higher Education and the Transformation of Culture

 

With Stan Mattson and Gayne Anacker (Facilitators), along with various Summer Institute plenary speakers

Today’s mainstream academy presents itself to the culture in a strongly paradoxical manner.

On the one hand, it enjoys the prestige of being society’s preeminent resource for knowledge and high-order skills.

On the other hand, it studiously avoids the big questions of purpose and the meaning of life, and many of its prominent professors deny the objective existence of truth and morality, all the while insisting that society is under serious moral obligations to protect the planet and embrace diversity of various kinds.

Despite the mainstream academy’s remarkable reputation and obvious successes, it is clear that it faces significant challenges concerning its own identity and purpose.

This Symposium will examine the historical roots of higher education, the linkage between intellectual virtue and moral virtue, the promise of Great Books curricula, and the possibility for the mainstream academy to be a vital source for cultural transformation.

Academically oriented plenary speakers will be invited to engage in dialogue on these and other key questions.

Stan Mattson — Facilitator, Higher Education Symposium President of the C.S. Lewis College Foundation, the division of the C.S. Lewis Foundation charged with establishing C.S. Lewis College. In 1986, joined by a company of Christian scholars, Dr. Mattson founded the C.S. Lewis Foundation. Over the past 25 years, he has been responsible for leading the development of all the Foundation’s programs, including C.S. Lewis College, Oxbridge (the C.S. Lewis Summer Institute conference series in Oxford and Cambridge, England), the C.S. Lewis Study Centre at The Kilns, the Faculty Forum, and the Foundation’s Regional Conferences and Retreats.  Early in his career, Dr. Mattson served as the Headmaster of The Master’s School, West Simsbury, CT. He was a member of the history faculty at Gordon College, MA, and has also taught at North Carolina State University and, most recently, at the University of Redlands, CA, where he was also Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations. Dr. Mattson holds a B.S. in Education from the State University of New York (Oswego), an M.S. in History from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. specializing in American Intellectual History from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill).

Gayne Anacker — Vice President for Academic Affairs of the C.S. Lewis College Foundation.  He was drawn into association with the C.S. Lewis Foundation 18 years ago out of a shared passion to found the College. He has been the Foundation’s Vice President for Academic Affairs for 16 years, serving in that capacity on a full-time basis since 2009. He is on leave of absence from California Baptist University, where he is Professor of Philosophy. Prior to his leave of absence, Dr. Anacker served California Baptist University as Associate Provost, and most recently as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.  Dr. Anacker began his career as Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, CA, and subsequently he became Founding President of Community Christian College in Redlands, CA. Dr. Anacker holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Westmont College, a Master of Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an M.A. in Philosophy from Washington State University, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine.