Announcing the 2024-2025 Public Lecture Series at Wyoming Catholic College

This year’s series will begin on September 27th, 2024 with a lecture by Dr. Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, a member of the faculty at the Busch School at Catholic University of America, and founder of the Social Research academic area there, where she is an Associate Professor of Social Research and Economic Thought. Formerly Assistant Professor and Chair of the Economics Department at Ave Maria University, her primary areas of research include economics of education and religion, family studies and demography, Catholic social thought and political economy. Dr. Pakaluk is the 2015 recipient of the Acton Institute’s Novak Award, a prize given for “significant contributions to the study of the relationship between religion and economic liberty.” A mother of eight, Dr. Pakaluk recently traveled across the United States and interviewed fifty-five college-educated women who were raising five or more children—an adventure that led to her most recent book, “Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth.” (Dr. Pakaluk’s lecture will be the concluding event in the two-day celebration of Professor Kyle Washut’s Inauguration.)

On October 11th, 2024, the College will host a panel discussion, “Medicine, Conscience, and the Common Good,” featuring Frederick “Eric” Cubin, MD, MS, Rep. Sarah Penn, FNP, and Francis J. Milligan, MD. Dr. Cubin, a Casper native who has been a forceful voice in Wyoming’s medical community for a number of years, is a radiologist at Casper Medical Imaging & Outpatient Radiology. Rep. Penn, who has been serving in the state legislature since 2023, is currently working as a Family Nurse Practitioner at the Lander Medical Clinic & Western Family Care. And Dr. Milligan, who has been a long-time friend of the College and is the father of numerous alumni (as well as serving on the College’s Board of Directors), is a family practitioner in the rural town of Bow, N.H. All three are well-positioned to speak on the need to protect and preserve the conscience of medical practitioners and providers, and the importance of being guided by moral and ethical principles in a world often dominated by questions of practicality and profit.

Dr. Stephen Barr will deliver our November 8th, 2024 lecture. An American physicist and a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Delaware, Dr. Barr is also a member of the University’s Bartol Research Institute, and does research in theoretical particle physics and cosmology. He writes and lectures frequently on the relation of science and religion. From 2000 to 2017 he served on the Editorial Advisory Board of First Things, and his writing has also appeared in Commonweal, National Review, Modern Age, The Public Interest, America, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. In 2007, he was awarded the Benemerenti Medal by Pope Benedict XVI, and in 2010, he was elected a member of the Academy of Catholic Theology. He is currently serving as president of the Society of Catholic Scientists.

Moving into the second semester, Dr. Edward Castronova will speak on February 14th, 2025. Currently an associate professor of telecommunications at Indiana University-Bloomington, Dr. Castronova previously held positions as an associate professor of economics at California State University-Fullerton, and associate professor of public policy and political science at the University of Rochester. He obtained a B.S. degree in international affairs from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a frequent speaker and consultant on the implications of synthetic worlds.

On March 24th, 2025, Paul Jernberg, head of the Magnificat Institute and the College’s Choir Director and Composer-in-Residence, will deliver a lecture on music, including performances from the Wyoming Catholic College choir. Paul has been a parish music director, composer, and educator: in Chicago’s inner city, in Peoria, Illinois, and in central Massachusetts. In 2017, he became the founding director of the Magnificat Institute of Sacred Music, a non-profit organization dedicated to the renewal of Catholic sacred music. His compositions and recordings have received acclaim throughout North America and Europe, inspiring a 2019 documentary, The Song of the Longing Heart, produced by French filmmaker Francois Lespes.

The series will conclude with an April 25, 2025 presentation from Dale Ahlquist, President of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, creator and host of the EWTN series “G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense,” and Publisher of Gilbert Magazine. The author of six books (and editor of fourteen), he is a Senior Fellow of the Chesterton Library at London, and has been called “probably the greatest living authority on the life and work of G.K. Chesterton.” Dale has given more than 900 lectures, including at Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Notre Dame, Oxford, the Vatican Forum in Rome, and the House of Lords in London. He is also the co-founder of Chesterton Academy, a top-rated Catholic classical high school in Hopkins, Minnesota, which is the flagship of the growing Chesterton Schools Network, which now includes nearly 60 high schools in the U.S., Canada, Italy, Iraq, and Sierra Leone.

The first two events of the Fall Semester (Dr. Pakaluk’s lecture in September and the medical panel in October) will be held in the Lander Community and Convention Center (950 Buena Vista Drive), and Dr. Barr’s November lecture will be held at The Inn at Lander (260 Grandview Drive). All events will begin at 7:00PM, with a reception to follow, and all are open to the public. We hope to see you there!