National Advisory Board
The National Advisory Board is made up of leaders in Christian education who share with us a vision for encouraging one another toward faith and biblical wisdom through thoughtful conversation and skill development. They stand as advocates for and partners with the college at a national level. We are excited to join with them as we all work together toward our common educational goals.
The National Advisory Board functions in a purely advisory role, rather than a governance role. They provide counsel and review of our outreach efforts and advocate on our behalf. They will be invited to participate in Gutenberg conferences and, as opportunity allows, invite Gutenberg faculty to write and speak at other venues.
Jon Balsbaugh
Jon Balsbaugh
Jon Balsbaugh has over twenty years’ experience as a high-school and junior-high teacher and currently serves as the president of Trinity Schools, a national network of classically oriented Christian schools designed to awaken students to the reality of the human condition and to promote the pursuit of truth, the practice of goodness, and the creation of beauty. Before taking over as president, he served as the headmaster of Trinity School at River Ridge (Eagan, MN), designed Trinity Schools’ poetry curriculum, and worked extensively in teacher training.
Mr. Balsbaugh received his master’s degree in English from the University of St. Thomas, studying the theological aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Veritas Journal, an online journal of education and human awakening, and speaks on education nationwide.
Robert Bortins
Robert Bortins
Robert Bortins is CEO of Classical Conversations. Robert earned a B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from Clemson University in 2006. After graduating, he worked as a management trainee for UPS and as a plant engineer for Easy Gardener, a Jobes company. In 2011, he returned to the family business, Classical Conversations, Inc., to develop a marketing program. He was then appointed CEO of the family-owned company in 2012. In the years since Robert Bortins became CEO of Classical Conversations, the company has grown by 300 percent and become the world’s largest classical homeschooling organization.
He is also a member of C12 Group, the largest professional development network of Christian CEOs and executives. Under Robert’s leadership, Classical Conversations has been named a Certified Best Christian Workplace by BCWI for five years in a row. Robert and his wife, April, live in Southern Pines, North Carolina, with their three young children. In his free time, Robert enjoys coaching rugby and playing golf.
Richard Bradford
Richard Bradford
Richard Bradford, M.A., was born in Toronto and raised in a number of places around Southern Ontario. He completed his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Trinity Western University and his master’s degree at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Richard spent quite a few years painting houses before completing his education. He moved to Switzerland with his family in January 2000, and he and Karen became workers at L’Abri in January 2001. Since 2015, he and his wife, Karen, have been the coordinators of Swiss L’Abri.
Charles Evans
Charles Evans
Charles T. Evans is the founder and senior partner of BetterSchools, LLC. He has worked in independent schooling for more than twenty-five years, leading schools in Virginia, North Carolina, and Texas.
Since 2006, Chuck has provided strategic consulting and professional development for dozens of independent and parochial schools. A frequent presenter at conferences, Chuck’s work focuses on the wide spectrum of challenges that exist in private schools, especially given the dramatic changes in the private educational marketplace over the past decade.
The former executive director of the Texas Private Schools Association, Chuck has worked as a lobbyist, advocating in the Texas state legislature on private school issues. He is also a former member of the State CAPE Network of state-wide political advocates and has worked as a state certified mediator.
Chuck is the co-author with Robert Littlejohn of Wisdom and Eloquence: A Christian Paradigm for Classical Learning (Crossway 2006), and he contributed a chapter to a recent work on Christian schooling titled Building a Better School: Essays on Exemplary Christian School Leadership (Paideia 2012).
Most recently, Chuck collaborated as a co-founder of the Council on Educational Standards and Accountability and served on the CESA board’s executive committee from 2010 to 2013.
An author, blogger, webinar and video producer, and frequent speaker to private school gatherings, Chuck also teaches in the graduate program for independent school leadership at Vanderbilt University/Peabody College and the Van Lunen Fellowship for Executive Christian School Management.
Originally from the Washington, D.C., area, he lives in Austin with his wife, Julie, with and near their seven children.
Rev. Brian Foos
Rev. Brian Foos
Father Brian Foos, is the founding rector of St. Andrew’s Church and founding headmaster of St. Andrew’s Academy. He earned his undergraduate degree in literature and graduate degree in theology, which have brought him a lifetime of teaching both subjects. He is choirmaster of St. Andrew’s Academy, which keeps him involved in music, a passion since childhood. He reads widely but slowly, enjoying particularly fiction, theology, and Church history among other genres. He has edited and published various journals and rags, in his younger days pursuing writing, design, and layout with some enthusiasm but little financial success.
Father Foos studied under and serves under the Rt. Rev. Ray R. Sutton, Bishop of the Diocese of Mid-America of the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC)/Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). He was a member of the ACNA Catechesis Task Force from 2010 to 2015, has taught many a workshop at the Anglican Way Institute Summer Conference at Bishop Sutton’s Cathedral in Dallas, and currently serves on the Board of the Anglican School Association, a relatively newer organization helping a dozen and growing number of Anglican parochial schools from multiple jurisdictions connect and share resources and encouragement.
Father Foos, a native Californian, spent the majority of his childhood amongst the trees, streams, and lakes of Northwestern Plumas County. He and his wife, Kaitlin, another native Californian, have three children, the oldest just having graduated high school. He prefers hiking in the woods and reading poetry by streams rather than fishing in them; basketball to baseball at all times; enjoys sailing and remembers waterskiing before it hurt so much to fall, and still enjoys downhill snow-skiing on the old style boards from the 1980s (which earn some laughs on the slope!). He loves to travel and to spread this addiction to students, as he shows them some of his favorite haunts in the British Isles and other European locales. He also loves fine, handcrafted ales, appreciates a good cigar, and enjoys being outdoors more than indoors, especially if he can sit and look at the lawn rather than mow it.
Leslie Moeller
Leslie Moeller
Leslie Moeller, J.D., is the Chairman of the Board of the Society for Classical Learning and has served on the SCL Board for 12 of the last 14 years. She currently consults with Classical, Christian schools across the nation in the areas of leadership, administrative function, and governance. She is a member of the Board of New Covenant Schools in Lynchburg, Virginia, and the Board of Academic Advisors for the Classic Learning Test. Most recently, she helped lead a three-year restructuring of the Upper School at the Covenant School in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Prior to her family’s move to Virginia in 2015, she spent 13 years at Geneva School of Boerne where she served in multiple roles, including Chairman of the Board, Head of School, Capital Campaign Co-Chairman, founder and coach of Geneva’s nationally-ranked debate program, and Senior Thesis instructor.
She received her Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School and her Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Economics from the University of Virginia. Leslie and her husband, Eric, have three children.
John Seel, Chair
John Seel
John Seel has years of experience in classical education and administration. He is a founding board member of the Society for Classical Learning and two-term chairman. He is also the co-founder of the Council on Educational Standards and Accountability. He is the founding headmaster of The Cambridge School of Dallas. Most recently, he was the director of cultural engagement for the John Templeton Foundation in Philadelphia, where he managed a portfolio of over $8 million in grants per year.
The son of medical missionaries in Korea, he brings personal and professional expertise in understanding culture and cultural change. He is known as a cultural analyst, having served in leadership roles at the Institute for the Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is an expert on the church’s missional outreach to the coming generation of young people and is the author of The New Copernicans: Millennials and the Survival of the Church.
Seel has a master of divinity degree from Covenant Theological Seminary and a doctorate in American Studies from the University of Maryland (College Park). He has served as an adjunct faculty member at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary, and Palmer Theological Seminary.
He is serves on the board of the Windrider Institute and the advisory board of the New Canaan Society, Gutenberg College, and Renew the Arts. He and his wife, Kathryn, have three grown children, and they live on a 250-acre historic farm in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania.
Kathryn Smith
Kathryn Smith
- Ph.D., University of Dallas: Literature
- M.A., University of Dallas: Literature
- B.U.S., University of New Mexico: Liberal Studies
Dr. Kathryn Smith is co-director of the MAT in Classical Education and Assistant Professor in Classical Education in the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University. Prior to joining Eastern, she was a visiting lecturer at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas.
She holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in literature from the University of Dallas (Irving, TX), where she was a Louise Cowan Scholar; and a B.U.S. in liberal studies from the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM).
Dr. Smith’s academic interests include classical education, modernist and contemporary poetry and poetics, as well as ancient and modern rhetoric. Dr. Smith has taught literature and writing for nearly twenty years at both secondary and post-secondary institutions. During this time, she and her husband, Bryan, have been active in classical private and charter schools, having been involved in the founding of three classical schools and a national organization for Orthodox Christian education.
She enjoys hiking, skiing, and bicycling.
She is married to Bryan Smith and has one daughter, Elizabeth.