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Algebra Foundations
Variables, equations, systems, and quadratics. The first course of any serious mathematical education.
An education in the classical mold: mathematics for clarity, history for perspective, the sciences for evidence, letters for voice, languages for humility, and philosophy for everything else. Every course is graded; every essay is read.
The queen of the sciences. Our mathematics programme proceeds from the foundations of arithmetic and algebra to the heights of analysis and proof — taught in the conviction that nothing concentrates the mind so well as a well-stated theorem.
Variables, equations, systems, and quadratics. The first course of any serious mathematical education.
The thirteen books of Euclid, read attentively and proved in full. Compasses optional, attention compulsory.
Differential and integral calculus from first principles. Substantial problem sets, two examinations, one final.
Vectors, matrices, eigenvalues — and why nearly every applied science you encounter rests on them.
Distributions, inference, and an honest treatment of uncertainty. Useful long after graduation.
Primes, congruences, and the surprising paths from Euclid to modern cryptography.
To know any time but your own is to begin to be educated. Our history courses span antiquity to the present day, taught in close company with the primary sources.
From the city-states of Mesopotamia to the fall of Rome. The cradle of nearly every later history.
Christendom, Islam, the Silk Road, and the long centuries between Rome and the Renaissance.
America, France, Haiti, and the long aftershocks. We read the pamphlets, not just the textbooks.
Empire, industry, and the political history of the twentieth century. A serious confrontation with the recent past.
How the great arguments of philosophy, theology, and politics travelled across centuries.
Why histories disagree. A capstone for advanced students — required for honors in History.
The world is patient with anyone willing to measure carefully. Our science courses are mathematical where mathematics is appropriate and empirical where evidence is what matters.
Classical physics from Galileo to Newton. Weekly home experiments, two examinations.
Atoms, bonds, reactions. Chemistry as a careful story about matter behaving.
Cells, DNA, evolution, and ecosystems. Biology for the serious lay student.
From Ptolemy to the present. We read the sky and the equations that describe it.
Maxwell, neatly. A second-year physics course for students with calculus.
Geology, oceans, and atmosphere. The science of the planet we live on.
Read closely, write clearly, argue well. The work of letters is, in the end, the work of thought itself.
Five essays, three rewrites each, one capstone. The cornerstone of our writing programme.
Homer, Plato, Augustine, Dante. A year-long encounter with the western canon's earliest voices.
Austen to Morrison. Close readings, weekly essays, vigorous discussion.
The most demanding offering at the Academy. Our alumni often say it was the part of their education they remember most clearly.
The Wheelock method, modernized. We read Caesar by week ten.
Attic Greek from the alphabet onward. Plato in the original by year's end — or so we hope.
Writing Cicero's Latin, not just reading it. An advanced course for the deeply committed.
Where the disciplines meet. Logic gives us tools; ethics gives us obligations; the history of ideas gives us company in the long argument that is education itself.
Propositional and predicate logic. A semester of careful thinking — for the philosopher, the mathematician, and the lawyer-to-be.
Virtue, duty, and consequence. We read Aristotle, Kant, and Mill — and argue.
The deepest questions of all, taken seriously. For the third- or fourth-year student.