Author: Shanon Brooks

5 Words That Can Greatly Improve Your Education

The excerpt below is from Oliver DeMille’s Weekly Mentor. Click here for the full article. Word One: Screening Screening is the act of learning from the various screens in our lives—smartphones, tablets, smart watches, computers, televisions, electronic billboards, etc. ((See Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable, 2016, 88-89) This is actually a warning word. Screening can often […]

The Battle of Fort McHenry

My daughter just sent me a Facebook link to a patriotic video of Pastor Rutherford preaching at the  Shepherd of The Hills Church in California back in 2010. He passionately tells the story of the origin of the hymn “The Star Spangled Banner,” Francis Scott Key, and the Battle of Baltimore.  His is a moving rendition of history […]

A Capital Campaign That Anyone Can Afford

Monticello College 2016/2017 Capital Campaign It is time to increase our efforts in building Monticello College and that takes money. This capital campaign will raise $200,000. This campaign has three purposes: Build our Endowment ($25,000) Provide Scholarships ($100,000) Construction of Dining Hall (phase one) ($75,000) The plan is simple: 1,000 donors contributing $10 per month […]

Conversation With A Student

The following is a short conversation with an online Masters student who is the mother of 6 with all her kids still at home. From: Monticello College Student – MA in Natural Law Subject: Readings Date: June 24, 2016 12:02:07 PM MDT To: Doctor Brooks <sb@monticellocollege.org> Found an accountability partner which is huge. Still only got […]

Earth Art

The California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth) is where we learned to build with “Super Adobe.”

MC Students On Campus

I literally have had no time to update you until now. See the short student report and video below to her family and friends. THE DIARY OF AN AVID READER          

The Diary Of An Avid Reader

Okay, so you know that we teach the Great Books, and that we have long classroom discussions, and that we doing a lot of hard farm work. But now I want you to hear straight from the students themselves. For the next few weeks, I will be featuring student blogs so you can get to […]

Success vs Failure

In our current culture failure means: lack of success; an unsuccessful person, enterprise, or thing. But that is a narrow and incomplete definition. If you look further, you will find a more complete definition: a lack or deficiency of desired quality; the action or state of not functioning; a sudden cessation of power. What this […]

An Apple Orchard Is Born!

  We are so grateful to all the donors who helped raise the $8,000 + to fund this orchard and to Joelle Mancuso – CA (MC Trustee) who managed the entire fund raising project every day for over a month.   A super big thank you to the volunteers who helped our students make this […]

Needs Versus Wants

Over the past 50 years, America has developed the world’s largest consumer culture. You really have to see this. The U.S. has the 3rd largest population in the world following China and India.  But the U.S. also has the 2nd highest rate of consumption (following the oil rich country of the United Arab Emirates), where […]

Krislyn Elliott & Lauren Swanepoel

Krislyn Elliott and Lauren Swanepoel act more like sisters than moms as they take really slow walks through the woods together, looking at and taking pictures of every plant they see & wishing they could remember their names and uses more thoroughly. They also like concocting herbal teas, salves, tinctures and strange drinks.

Krislyn is from Utah and has loved learning about plants since an unusually cool high school biology teacher took his classes on neighborhood botany walks. She has always been fascinated and constantly amazed at the power and beauty of plants.

Lauren is from South Africa, she and her family emigrated to Utah almost 10 years ago. They have fallen in love with the area and know more about this state & the great places to explore here than most Utah natives.

We both feel strongly about taking care of our families with natural methods and the abundant medicine we have growing right around us. We are trying to learn as much as we can about our magical local plants and are looking forward to sharing some of our favorites with you.

William DeMille

Director of Georgic Develeopment

William DeMille is a lifelong vegetable farmer. He studied Horticulture and Agronomy at Northwest Missouri University, Maryville. He holds a certificate in aquaponic engineering and production from Cornell University, NY, and another from GrowHaus Aquaponics in Denver, CO. He also studied soil regeneration and is a graduate of Dr. Elaine’s Soil Food Web School. He is the Director of Georgic Development for The Center for American Legacy Studies.

William is a farm consultant establishing several agricultural startups since 2005 in Missouri, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada and he currently manages 2500 acres of grassland for the Ruby Mountain Foods Company.

His latest venture is a market gardening school called Georgic Revolution where he teaches a 17-week course onsite in Nevada covering soil health and vegetable production without the use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. and where he operated a soil lab.

William lives with his wife Vernie in the snow capped mountains of Northern Nevada.

Lloyd Nelson

World Renown BD Expert

Lloyd Nelson has been practicing the art of Biodynamic (BD) Agriculture for over twenty years. He is a BD preparation maker, builder, artist, farmer, arborist, BD educator & consultant. He is co-founder of Biodynamic Source – a Colorado based non-profit specializing in high potency BD preparations – and he owns and operates a Biodynamic spray, fertilizer and consultation service. He has worked with small and large scale farms, vineyards, and orchards to transition to sustainable Biodynamic land management and Demeter BD Certification.

Vern Cox, PhD

Educator

Vern Cox is married to Joyce Christensen and they have 8 children. He has 3 earned degrees, a BA in psychology, and both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in marriage and family therapy.

He has had a diverse and interesting career that started with the Bureau of Land Management, followed by a stint as a Learning Disabilities teacher, and finally a marriage and family therapist, working his way up to executive director of the High Country Counseling and Resource Centers that served two counties in Wyoming.

Dr. Cox served for several years on the board of a charter school. Dr. Cox remains heavily involved in his community and the home schooling movement.

He has extensive background in marriage and family counseling, having held a number of administrative positions during his first career. He holds a BA in Psychology and both a Masters and PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy. He lives with his wife and several married children on their multi-generation farm in Southern Utah.

Joseph Lofthouse

Educator

Joseph adopted the principles of landrace gardening in response to the harsh growing conditions in a high-altitude, short-season, desert garden. Instead of relying on expensive poisons, labor, and materials to coddle the plants, he encourages genetic diversity, cross-pollination, and survival of the fittest, allowing the plants to adapt themselves to the current and ever-changing ecosystem, thus simplifying gardening and seed saving. Joseph is the author of Landrace Gardening: Food Security Through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination. Joseph loves eating, farming, swimming, hot-springs, sunbathing, bird-watching, running, yoga, leggings, kilts, playing guitar, singing, and living habitually barefoot.

Dan Brooks

Educator

Dan Brooks was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. During his first career, he spent 20 years working in and managing high-end restaurants and golf courses including extensive banquet/special events services and ice sculptures.

For the past 23 years, Dan has been a successful entrepreneur and family business owner in Las Vegas. He and his wife have 4 children and 11 grandchildren. He serves as a trustee for The Center for American Legacy Studies.

Shanon Brooks, PhD

Director

Shanon Brooks is the director of The Center for American Legacy Studies, an institution dedicated to helping families embrace and incorporate the Five American Ideals; Georgics, Liber, Providence, Public Virtue, and Liberty into their lives and communities. America exists because of Americans. Americans are the beneficiaries of a peculiar culture and way of living.

Over the past 75 years, that culture and way of life have been lost. Restore that culture and Americans will rebuild America to once again be worthy of John Winthrop’s 1630 admonition, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Brooks has been a leader in alternative higher education for over 30 years, and is the author of two books: AMERICAN: Killing the American Dream and A Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens.

Dr. Brooks is a veteran of military service in the United States Submarine Fleet and holds a Bachelor’s degree in business administration, a Master’s degree in education, and a Ph.D. in constitutional law.

He and his wife Julia reside on the 80-acre conference facility of The Center for American Legacy Studies.