The American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE) held annual elections on June 12, 2018, expanding its Board to 16 members. Joining the Board for the first time are Peter Keith, Robert Maranto, Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill and Karl Schumann. Elected to serve on the Council of Scholars were Joseph Wysocki and, by special election at the October Board meeting, Sara Henary.
Mr. Peter Keith is a partner at Gallagher, Evelius & Jones LLP and specializes in civil litigation. He has been an active practitioner in federal and Maryland state courts since 1980. Keith has held the position of Assistant Attorney General of Maryland, and has served as Board Chair of the Independent College Fund of Maryland. Currently he is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland Law School where he teaches Civil Litigation. Keith received his B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Virginia.
Mr. Robert Maranto is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Maranto has written and edited numerous books on education reform including President Obama and Education Reform: The personal and the political (2012), and A Guide to Charter Schools (2006). He is widely published in scholarly journals and his op-eds can be found in the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Houston Chronicle, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Baltimore Sun. Maranto received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and B.S. from the University of Maryland.
Ms. Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill is the Executive Director of the Fund for Academic Renewal. Prior to assuming this position, she served as the Vice President of Development for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Merrill has taught at St. John’s College in Annapolis and The College of William and Mary. She is a member of the board of the Advocates for the Goucher Prison Education Partnership and has taught in the college program at Maryland’s only prison for women. Her essays on philanthropy and higher education have appeared in Philanthropy and Philanthropy Daily. Merrill received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University and B.A. from the University of Calgary.
Mr. Karl Schumann is Technical Delivery Manager at Appian, an international custom software development company in Reston (VA). Prior to his position with Appian, Schumann served as a consultant at UPD Consulting, designing and managing data projects for the Washington, DC Public Schools department. He has taught mathematics and economics at public, private and charter schools in Washington, DC. Schumann received his M.S. from the University of Virginia, M.A. from George Washington University and B.A. from The College of William and Mary.
Mr. Joseph Wysocki is Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at Belmont Abbey College (NC). He is co-founder of the new Honors College at Belmont Abbey College and Schola – a summer Great Books program for high school students. Wysocki also teaches Classic Texts of Political Philosophy: Ancient and Modern, American Political Thought, and the American Constitution. He is the author of several introductions in The Belmont Abbey College Reader, an anthology of philosophical, rhetorical, literary, political, and theological texts in the Catholic intellectual tradition. Wysocki received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Baylor University and B.A. from Belmont Abbey College.
Ms. Sara Henary is Assistant Professor of Political Science and a member of the Honors College faculty at Missouri State University in Springfield (MO). She has held teaching appointments in the Department of Political Science at Wake Forest University, the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia, and the Department of Government at American University. Henary has lectured and published on Locke, Tocqueville and Trollope, and is currently completing a manuscript, John Locke on Nature and Politics. Henary received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Virginia, and B.A. from Rhodes College.