Yorktown University

YU Newsletter, August 19, 2009

Director of Admissions, Chris Evans, and Dr. Wade Shol, represented Yorktown University at the July 28-30 Department of Defense Worldwide Education Conference in Atlanta. Yorktown University's exhibit attracted several hundred of the more than one thousand attendees. The Worldwide Education conference is held every three years and attracts U.S. Military education service officers, representatives of military commands, and more than a hundred distance learning colleges serving U.S. military personnel worldwide. Dr. Shol earned his undergraduate degree while serving in the U.S. Navy and this Fall and Winter will begin a tour of U.S. military bases.

At the conclusion of the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin Delegate from Pennsylvania, was asked, what kind of government was fashioned? He replied, “A republic, if you can keep it." Franklin understood that the Constitution was founded on a philosophy of limited government that required politically “virtuous” and engaged citizens. It was now up to future generations of Americans to keep a republican government—or lose it.

Diane Gilbert-Spidle embodies the civic-minded spirit that the Founders said the new government needed. Diane is married and the mother of one adult daughter and resides in Windham, New Hampshire, where she is nearing completion of the M.A. in Government degree program at Yorktown University. Her chosen “Area Concentration” is Foundations of Democracy in America and Western Europe and she is now completing Professor Randall Balmer’s “Religion in American History” course. She chose this area concentration to pay homage to the ideal our Founding Fathers of an informed citizenry.

Although her educational and professional career centered on information technology at Digital Equipment, Inc. where she was a software engineer and project manager, Diane has always been politically active, frequently lobbying the New Hampshire State legislature for better governance transparency. In 1999 Diane was elected to serve a three-year term as a “Selectman”—New Hampshire’s name for Town Council Member.

Her political activities attracted a cohort of civic-minded local citizens who helped her form a non-profit organization to improve knowledge about the Constitution of the United States and the philosophy of limited government of the Founders. This organization is The National Heritage Center for Constitutional Studies.

Since its inception the NHCCS has scheduled several seminars a year. The largest event celebrates “Constitution Day,” the day the Constitution of the United States was signed in September, 1787. This year The National Heritage Center for Constitutional Studies will conduct a seminar on September 13, 2009 in Windham, New Hampshire.

Since her enrollment in the MA Government program at Yorktown, Diane a diligent student and early next year she will earn the Master of Arts in Government from Yorktown University!

Yorktown University Is the place in higher education for studies in classical and neo-classical economics. In 2004 Yorktown University conducted a five-hour seminar on Supply-side Economics with presentations by Allan Reynolds, Stephen Entin, Mark Skousen, George Gilder and Steve Moore.

And on July 11, Yorktown University sponsored two additional lectures:

Richard Rahn, A History of the 1978 Supply-side Tax Cuts

Stephen Moore, Supply-Side Economics: What's Left After Today's Financial Crisis?

You can access those recorded lectures—and Yorktown University’s Online Supply Side Library—free of charge by clicking here.

Two members of Yorktown University’s Faculty will address The National Heritage Center for Constitutional Studies on September 13.

Dr. Peter Wood will address the top “What Little We Know: The Expanding Emptiness of American Higher Education”

Dr. Jason Ross’ topic is “Madison’s Constitution.”

Click here to reserve a student seat on the University’s 2009 Guided Scholarship Tours.

Yorktown University Guided Scholarship Tours introduce student tourists of all ages to the following exciting places:

David Corbin’s tour of John Quincy Adam’s Massachusetts

Gerald Gunderson’s tour of entrepreneurial New York City

Arthur Pontynen’s tour Christian art at the Chicago Art Institute

Edward Levinson’s tour of architectural Philadelphia and Ft. Lauderdale’s Gold Coast

Click here to see summer reading lists of Yorktown University’s Founding Faculty It’s still not too late to read a good book before Labor Day!

Sincerely yours,

Richard J. Bishirjian, Ph.D.
President
Yorktown University