Meet the Alumni

Alumni:



David Arias

Dissertation: Rediscovering Nature: An Exposition and Defense of the Thomistic Reasoning to Substantional Form and First Matter per Viam Motus, 2012

Currently: Tutor, Thomas Aquinas College, CA

Sr. Terese Auer, OSF

Dissertation: The Apparent Antinomy of Divine Causality and Human Free Choice, 1989

Currently: Chair, Bioethics Department, Pope John Paul the Great, Dumphries, VA

Mark Barker

Dissertation: The Cognitive Power: Objects and Terminology, 2007

Currently: Professor of Philosophy, Notre Dame Seminary, New Orleans, LA

Keith Bower

Dissertation: The Roots of Mathematics: An Informal Foundationalist Approach, 2001

Currently: Project Management Consultant in oil and gas industry

Robert Bunting

Dissertation: Universals and Laws of Nature, 1998

Currently: IT Infrastructure Manager, Dona Ana County, Las Cruces, NM

James Capehart

Dissertation: Étienne Gilson and the First Two Stages of His Christian Philosophy, 2018

Currently: Teacher, Sacred Heart Apostolic School, Rolling Prairie, IN

Samuel Condic

Dissertation: Hominization and Human Life: Toward a More Integrated Understanding of Human Development, 2009

Currently: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Mary, Bismarck, ND

Gregory Coulter

Dissertation: Mind and Body in St. Thomas Aquinas: Some Problems with Aquinas’ Notion That the Intellectual Principle Both Subsists and is a Substantial Form, 1989

Currently: Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN

Anthony Crifasi

Dissertation: The Philosophical Significance of Cartesian Sensory Physiology, 2009

Currently: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Benedictine College, Atchison, KS

Domenic D’Ettore

Dissertation: Early Thomists on Demonstration through Analogous Terms, 2012

Currently: Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Marian University, Indianapolis, IN

Daniel De Haan

Dissertation: Necessary Existence and the Doctrine of Being in Avicenna's Metaphysics of the Healing: On the Function of the Fundamental Scientific First Principles of Metaphysics, 2015

Currently: Completing a post-doctorate under Professor Sarah Coakley at Cambridge University, on a project that involves three postdoctoral fellows in cosmology, evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience.

Casey Edler

Dissertation:  Thomas Aquinas and the ‘Kalam’ Cosmological Argument: Tension at the Heart of Natural Theology, 2016

Currently:  Chair of the Philosophy and Theology Division, St. Joseph Seminary College, Saint Benedict, LA

Joseph Hattrup

Dissertation: Form and Predicability in Aristotle's Categories and the Middle Books of the Metaphysics, 2013

Currently: Tutor, Thomas Aquinas College, CA

Brian Kemple

Dissertation: Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition: The Philosophy of Being as First Known

Currently: Founder of Continuum Philosophical Insight, a private philosophical education practice bringing thinking beyond the university.

Sr. Anne Francis Le, OP

Dissertation: Nudus Sequens?: St. Thomas Aquinas on Poverty and Christian Perfection, 2014

Currently: Instructor, St. Mark’s College and Corpus Christi College, Vancouver CA

R. Mary Hayden Lemmons

Dissertation:  Love and the First Principles of St. Thomas’ Natural Law

Currently: Associate Professor of Philosophy and Catholic Studies, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN

Edward Lyons

Dissertation: Models of Intentional Action, Freedom and the Possibility of Moral Responsibility, 1998

Currently: Associate Professor of Law, Oklahoma City University School of Law

John Macias

Dissertation: Alasdair MacIntyre’s Flourishing Human Being and Small-Scale Political Communities

Currently: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, St. Patrick’s Seminary and University, Menlo Park, California

Joseph Magee, II

Dissertation: Unmixing the Intellect: Aristotle on Cognitive Powers and Bodily Organs, 1999

Currently: Director of the Catholic Student Center, Lecturer in Philosophy, Sam Houston State University

Thomas McLaughlin

Dissertation: The Aristotelian Definition of Motion and the Principal of Intertia, 2001

Currently: Associate Professor, Pre-Theology Faculty, St. John Vianney Theological Seminary

Andrea Messineo

Dissertation: Incommensurability in MacIntyre and Popper, 2008

Currently: Marriage and Family Therapist; Member of American Philosophical Practitioners Association

Matthew Moore

Dissertation: Did Aquinas Teach a State of Pure Nature for the Human Being?, 2020

Currently: Assistant Professor, Del Mar College

Jordan Olver

Dissertation: Bonum Nostrum: Eudaimonism and Love of Others for Their Own Sake According to Thomas Aquinas, 2014

Currently: Philosophy Instructor, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan

Steven Peña

Dissertation: Onus Probandi:  An Attempt to Locate the Burden of Proof in the Existential Theistic Debate, 2015

Currently: Professor of Philosophy at San Jacinto College

Catherine Peters

Dissertation: The Causality of “Nature” in Avicenna’s Physics of the Healing, 2019

Currently: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA

Kevin Rickert

Dissertation: The Starting Point of the Fifth Way, 1997

Currently: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, St. Mary’s College of Minnesota

Jean William Rioux

Dissertation: Aristotle, Aquinas and the Foundations of Arithmetic, 1990

Currently: Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department, Benedictine College

Nelson Ramirez-Santa

Dissertation: From the Natural Understanding of Truth, to Aquinas’s adaequatio rei et intellectus Definition of Truth, and Beyond, 2017

Currently:  Lecturer in Philosophy, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX

Charles Robertson

Dissertation: The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and Embryo Rescue, 2017

Currently:  Theology Adjunct, Newman Theological College, Edmonton, AB

Austen Rockcastle

Dissertation: St. Thomas Aquinas on the Nature and Morality of Lying, 1993

Currently: Tutor, Chesterton Academy, a private, independent high school

John Skalko

Dissertation: Why Is It Intrinsically Evil to Violate the Purpose of a Power or Use Assertions Unnaturally? (2018)

Currently: Professor of Philosophy, St. John's Seminary, Brighton, MA

Ben Smith

Dissertation: Thomas Aquinas on Politics and the Common Good, 2008

Currently: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Aquinas College, Nashville, TN

Steve Striby

Dissertation: Against the Principles of Nominalism, 2007

Currently: Visiting Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Thomas, Houston TX

Scott Sullivan

Dissertation: Nihil Est Sine Ratione: A Defense of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, 2014

Currently: Owner and Chief Instructor, Bam Bam Martial Arts; Owner of Classical Theist Productions

Sherra Theissen

Dissertation: A Dialectical Analysis of the Intrasubjective Relationship Between the Intellect and the Will in Hannah Arendt and Thomas Aquinas, 1997

Currently: Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX

Daniel C. Wagner

Dissertation: φύσις καί τὸ ἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθὸν: The Aristotelian Foundations of the Human Good

Currently: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, MI

 

Jinnam Yi

Dissertation: Divine Command Theory and Natural Law Ethics in St. Thomas Aquinas: Reply to the Euthyphro Question

Currently: Donduk Women’s University, South Korea

Karen Zedlick

Dissertation: Contemplation, First Among Equals, 1993

Currently: Tutor, Thomas Aquinas College