Hello there. This is Mark Bauerline with another conversation. Before we get to it, a word about one of our sponsors.

Located in the foothills of Wyoming's spectacular wind river range, Wyoming Catholic

College, an accredited four-year Great Books Institution, is built on the ancient Western

tradition of the liberal arts and the freedom of the American West. The college offers

its students an immersion in the primary sources of the classical tradition, the grandeur of the

mountain wilderness, and the spiritual heritage of the Catholic Church.

Students experience the illumination of imagination and intellect through the great books and traditional disciplines,

literature and philosophy, mathematics and theology, science and Latin, and an outdoor program second to none.

The college celebrated an in-person graduation with its seniors last year and welcomed

its largest freshman class ever this year. Learn more about the college's unique space in the world

of American higher education at Wyoming Catholic.edu. Matthew J. Smith joins us today. He is a former

professor at Azusa Pacific University and an accomplished scholar

whose writings include performance and religion in early modern England, stage, cathedral, wagon

street, face-to-face in Shakespearean drama, ethics, performance, philosophy, and also

literature and religious experience beyond belief and unbelief. Now, he is also the

president of Hildegard College in California. That institution and higher education in general

and certain interesting experiments going on in that world.

That's our topic today. Welcome, President Smith. Thanks, Mark, for having me.

Now, I presume President Smith that you were secure and comfortable at Azusa Pacific.

You were a productive scholar with long summers to read and write.

You had Azusa Pacific probably has a pretty good faculty student ratio.

You didn't have too many papers to grade all the time.

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