Unity. Faith. Learning.

James K.A. Smith is a professor of philosophy at Calvin University, where he holds the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair. As a scholar, Smith has embraced the vocation of being a “translator” of philosophy for wider audiences. As a cultural critic and commentator, he explores the tensions of modern life, inviting readers and audiences to more intentional practices of faith and flourishing.

He is the award-winning author of a number of influential books including Desiring the Kingdom (2009), How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (2014), You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (2016), On the Road with Saint Augustine (2019), The Nicene Option: An Incarnational Phenomenology (2021) and, most recently, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now (2022). His next book, Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing, will be published by Yale University Press.

Smith has served as editor in chief of Comment magazine (2013-2018) and Image journal (2019-2024). His essays and criticism have appeared in magazines that include the Christian Century, Christianity Today, America, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, LitHub, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

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Dr. Joe Sanfelippo recently retired after spending the last 26 years in the building and the final 12 as the Superintendent of the Fall Creek School District in Fall Creek, WI. The Fall Creek School District was named an Innovative District by the International Center for Leadership in Education twice during that time. Joe holds a BA in Elementary and Early Childhood Education, an MS in Educational Psychology, an MS in Educational Leadership, and a Ph.D. in Leadership, Learning, and Service. He was selected as 1 of 117 Future Ready Superintendents and 1 of 50 Superintendents as a Personalized Learning Leader by the US Department of Education. Education Dive named Joe their National Superintendent of the Year in 2019.

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