The Kairos Scholars Honors Program—colloquially referred to as just “Kairos”—began in the fall of 2003 with Dr. Matthew Melton serving as the founding director. The first class of Kairos students consisted of 17 freshmen and 12 sophomores. In the coming years, more students committed to the program across all years and from various departments—the beginning of the truly interdisciplinary program it is today.

Since then, Kairos has served as a community of students who engage in scholarship and service together as they seek to learn and develop themselves. We are not only committed to producing good scholars, but also to developing our members as people who will contribute to their other communities now and in the future.

Kairos is first and foremost a community, providing the opportunity for Kairos members to establish close relationships with each other and with Kairos faculty members.

Our program is designed to incorporate and accentuate a liberal arts education by emphasizing a discussion-based community that extends beyond the classroom.

Kairos hosts community-wide events that provide opportunities for students to forge connections, building familiarity, friendship, and trust.

We also pair each incoming freshman with an upperclassman mentor to foster supportive community from the beginning.

Mentorship develops stronger connections within our community and helps incoming students connect with college life.

Kairos students frequently describe the program as a “family” or “home” at Lee, and Kairos provides opportunities for students to find their voices. We help students learn how to use their disciplinary knowledge to contribute to broader, interdisciplinary conversations.

The Kairos community provides support for students during their entire collegiate journey, developing students far beyond just their time in the program.

The unique Kairos community accompanies the program’s deep commitment to facilitating learning. Kairos is a community of students who are not only academically talented, but also uniquely dedicated to learning and questioning. Our curriculum utilizes a cohort model where students proceed through the General Education core together, carrying conversations between classes and learning from each other. The purpose of this cohort model is to join community and academics, challenging students to discuss important questions together.

These core classes are small (usually fewer than 15 students) and are taught by esteemed honors faculty who are known for their disciplinary expertise and their ability to foster robust discussion about the important questions that arise in these classes.

Our honors classes emphasize discussion --by seeking quality over quantity-- and analysis over memorization, challenging our students with a view toward the development and success of the community of students who take these classes.

As we seek to develop our student community both academically and individually, we encourage our members to cultivate a disposition of service.

As members of the Body of Christ, we are committed in our service to God and others. We believe that a true liberal arts education should not encourage students to disengage from non-academic areas of life. Rather, a true education should also develop students in these areas beyond the classroom, library, or lab. In Kairos, this development includes engaging in service within our broader community in Cleveland.

Whether this service is engaging in local tutoring programs or reaching out to various groups in our community, Kairos seeks to develop students with servant-hearted dispositions.

Part of the holistic development of Kairos is the cultivation of a spiritual community where students serve together, worship together, pray together, and bear one another’s burdens. The focus on service and spiritual community within Kairos is one of the most integral parts of our program, as this focus is crucial in our goal to develop well-rounded students both and in and out of the classroom.

Dr. Thomas Pope
Director

Served as Director of Kairos since 2017 and has been teaching Political Science at Lee since 2010, specializing in Political Philosophy and Constitutional Law. In a nutshell, this means that he loves talking about the ideas and institutions behind politics, but knows next to nothing about current events.

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Pope attended Berry College for his B.A. and Baylor University for his M.A. and Ph.D. While in Waco, he taught in Baylor’s Honors Program, cultivating an interest in interdisciplinary dialogue over questions perennial to the human experience. This fascination with dialectical conversation led him to Lee — an institution that emphasizes holistic pedagogy and Christ-centered philosophizing.

As a scholar, Dr. Pope has spent most of his time considering the relationship between individuals and communities, with a particular view to the responsibilities of each. Prominently featured in his office are pictures of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan.

Within the Kairos curriculum, Dr. Pope teaches the Freshman Gateway cohort and American Government. He also coordinates the Honors Colloquium each Spring. In addition to his Kairos responsibilities, Dr. Pope is the faculty sponsor of Alpha Chi and Lee University’s Pre-Law advisor. On sunny days, he is known to play croquet with students behind Storms Hall. On not-so-sunny days, he favors board games.

Dr. Jared Wielfaert

Assistant Professor of Humanities, and works on the cultural history of the Latin West in the early middle ages - with a particular focus on the literature of the Carolingian Renaissance. Wielfaert has a PhD in History from the University of Toronto; he holds an MA in Medieval Studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and an MA in Theology from Lee University. His hobbies include photography, fishing, hiking, and running after his wife and kids.

Wielfaert teaches HUMN 202: Rise of Europe in the Honors core, Latin, and upper-level courses in the history and literature of the middle ages.

Dr. Aaron Johnson

Ph.D. in Classics, from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and specializes in the intellectual culture and Greek literature of the later Roman Empire. He has held fellowships at Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies (Harvard University) and the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago, as well as being a Guest Researcher at the University of Tuebingen in Germany.

Johnson’s publications include three books, entitled, Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica (Oxford University Press, 2006), Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Eusebius (IB Tauris, 2014).

In addition, he has co-edited a volume, Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations (Center for Hellenic Studies Press/Harvard University Press, 2013), and has written over 20 scholarly articles and many dictionary entries and book reviews. He has been an invited speaker at Keble College, Oxford; the University of Paris, Sorbonne; Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies; Duke University; the University of Tuebingen; and elsewhere.

Aside from reading Greek, Dr. Johnson enjoys skateboarding, playing piano, and hiking. He draws inspiration from the unlikely sources of older punk rock and pre-1991 grunge music and Romantic-era piano music. He finds particular enjoyment teaching Kairos students because of their native curiosity, quirky humor, thoughtful faith commitments, and genuine kindness. Sharing courses with Kairos students who readily engage with complex and often odd literary pieces from Greco-Roman antiquity is an opportunity he does not take for granted.

Dr. Daniela Augustine

Daniela C. Augustine, DTh (University of South Africa)
Director, Graduate Studies in Theology & Ministry
Professor of Theological Ethics
Specialty: Theology of Social Transformation, Theology of Economics, Studies in Forgiveness and Reconciliation
School of Theology & Ministry | Location: STM 150C

Dr. Augustine’s areas of research include theological ethics, public theology, ecclesiology, pneumatology and liturgical theology. She is the author of many publications, including Pentecost, Hospitality and Transfiguration: Toward as Spirit-inspired Vision of Social Transformation and The Spirit and the Common Good: Shared Flourishing in the Image of God, winner of the 2020 Pneuma Book of the Year Award. She is associate editor of the Journal of Pentecostal Theology and co-editor of T&T Clark Systematic Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology Series. Augustine is recipient of Lee’s Excellence in Scholarship Award and served as the Society for Pentecostal Studies’ Christian Ethics Group Leader.

Dr. Chad Schrock

Associate Professor of English at Lee University, with a 2010 PhD from Penn State. He specializes in early British literature specifically and religion-and-literature more broadly. He teaches Rhetoric & Research (currently sub-themed “How to Read Intelligently for Pleasure”) in the Kairos core, Western Literature I: Ancient to Renaissance in the General Education Core, and hardcore English classes that range from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Capstone.

He has work published or forthcoming on texts from the fourth, fifth, eighth (depending on how you date Beowulf), twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, and there is mounting evidence that someone he does not know personally has actually read from his book Consolation in Medieval Narrative (2015).

His adorable and fascinating wife, Rachel, is an assistant worship leader at their church, and they have adopted two adorable and fascinating children: Toby and Lucy.

Dr. Stephanie Nordby, PhD

Stephanie Nicole Nordby, PhD (University of Oklahoma)
Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Theology

Dr. Stephanie Nicole Nordby joined the Lee faculty in 2019. She works in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and ethics. Her publications include “Metaphor and the Mind of God in Nevi’im” and “For Asmuch as These People Draw Near: Wrong Acts of Worship in the Latter Prophets.” Nordby is completing a second doctorate with the University of St Andrews on early Christology; she previously served as coeditor of St Andrews’s blog for analytic and exegetical theology, Blogos, and cohost of the theology podcast, Pogos. Examples of Nordby’s courses are Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Christian Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Metaphysics.

Specialty: Philosophy, Ethics, Theology

Dr. Michael Freake

Associate Professor of Biology since 2001 and teaches the Kairos Honors course, Environmental Science.

Dr. Freake integrates his Kairos Honors Environmental Science class into his current research, which focuses on the population ecology and conservation of eastern hellbenders (giant salamanders) in Tennessee, and the potential role of pesticides in amphibian declines. This research program is conducted in collaboration with the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, the National Park Service, and the Cherokee National Forest Service.

Freake leads a wildlife biology trip to Australia, and coaches the Lee Women’s rugby team. He loves fly fishing, and spends a lot of time in the workshop making things. He is married to Tracy Freake, and they have two children, Chloe and Matthew.

What is Kairos?

How do I get in?

Are any scholarships associated with Kairos?

Does Kairos accept AP and Dual Enrollment Credit?

Will I be doing a lot of extra work in Kairos?

How many Honors credit hours do I have to do as a Kairos Scholar?

What if I don't have a lot of elective hours in my program?

Do I have to declare a major to be in Kairos?

Does Kairos offer Honors Housing?

Are the perks worth it?

HONR-LU101 & LU102 Freshman Seminar – 3 hrs

HONR-EN110 Rhetoric & Research – 3 hrs

HONR-HU201 Foundations of Western Culture – 3 hrs

HONR-BS112 Environmental Science – 4 hrs

HONR-TH230 Introduction to Theology – 3 hrs

HONR-TH231 Introduction to Christian Ethics – 3 hrs

HONR-PY200 Understanding Human Behavior – 3 hrs

HONR-HU301 Foundations of the Modern World – 3 hrs

HONR-MT283 Logic– 3 hrs

HONR-491 Honors Colloquium – 1-3 hrs

Cover Letter

Curriculum Vitae

Faculty References

Short Responses

This letter should express your interest in and reasons for applying to be a Kairos Scholar. Please comment on your expectations of a member of the community of Kairos, based upon your knowledge of the program thus far and your previous experiences in various communities. Describe the qualities you as an individual will contribute to this academic community.

A CV is a kind of academic resume, highlighting any accomplishments you might have that would speak to why you might benefit and be benefited from Kairos. Elements may include:

High School GPA
Honors and awards you have received
Important classes you have taken
Clubs, organizations, or extracurricular activities
Volunteer or service experience
International travel or other notable experiences

Incoming freshmen should solicit two academic letters of recommendation from teachers or other persons who can speak to your academic skills, curiosity, and temperament. These letters should be sent to [email protected] and will be added to your application. Current students will need to provide the names of two faculty members (from Lee or your previous institution) who we may contact as a references for your candidacy.

In the online application, you'll be asked to reflect on the following questions in a few sentences:

What personal accomplishment are you most proud of?
Are you more of a leader or a follower? Why?
What is your least favorite academic subject? Why?
What is something about which you have changed your mind in the last few years?
Try to use these responses to give a sense of your academic voice, but also what we should know about your character.

Once you have all four documents prepared, you can now fill out this online application.

Finally, student members of the Kairos Scholars Recruitment Committee would like to conduct a brief phone interview with each applicant. The interviewer will ask you a few questions over the phone, allowing the application reviewers to get to know you better. Feel free to ask any questions you have about the Kairos Scholars program at this time.

You will be asked to sign-up for a half-hour interview time as part of the online application. The student interviewer will ask you a few questions to get to know you better and to give you a better sense of the program. Feel free to ask any questions you have at this time. If you need to reschedule or are unable to be interviewed at your scheduled time, please contact us at [email protected]. We'll make every attempt to reschedule missed interviews.

Ellie Shaffer
Chaplain

Grade - Junior
"Major" - English
One of my favorite elements of Kairos is that we are not only an academic group we’re a community that does life together. We learn together, serve together, worship together, and have fun together! The Kairos community is where I have found my place at Lee, and I hope others feel as welcome and at home in this community as I do.

"Fun Fact" - I love stories! I love books, of course, Lord of the Rings, Hamlet, a Finnish children’s story I recently discovered, and so many others. I love to hear people’s stories, their passions and experiences and adventures. I love to write stories. I love the story of Jesus, and that it’s true. I love the story God is writing from Creation to Eternity, and the adventure that it is to be a part of it.

Lauren Gray
VP of Media

Grade - Sophomore
"Major" - Digital Media, Journalism emphasis
Kairos was the reason I could finally see Lee in my future, as I sought where to attend college. Through the community we have established, and the fellowship we are able to cultivate and lean on, this very diverse, yet well-rounded group has been ultimately a huge blessing to my life. From worship nights to taking over classrooms to the endless quotes in the GroupMe, I couldn’t cherish a group of brothers and sisters more, than these ones that God has placed in my path, through Kairos.

"Fun Fact" - I was born 3.5 months early.

Lauren Ludwig
VP of Stewardship

Grade - Junior
"Major" - English Literature
Over the past two years, Kairos has truly become a family to me. It’s the community that has built both inside and outside the classroom that I truly find so special. I love that while we all have different interests and majors, we are all connected by our desire to grow and learn, while putting God at the forefront of our connection and conversation.

"Fun Fact" - In my free time, you can find me reading, studying in coffee shops, or catching up with friends!

We also pair each incoming freshman with an upperclassman mentor to foster supportive community from the beginning.

Mentorship develops stronger connections within our community and helps incoming students connect with college life.

As we seek to develop our student community both academically and individually, we encourage our members to cultivate a disposition of service.

Whether this service is engaging in local tutoring programs or reaching out to various groups in our community, Kairos seeks to develop students with servant-hearted dispositions.

Part of the holistic development of Kairos is the cultivation of a spiritual community where students serve together, worship together, pray together, and bear one another’s burdens. The focus on service and spiritual community within Kairos is one of the most integral parts of our program, as this focus is crucial in our goal to develop "well-rounded students both and in and out" of the classroom.

Menu

About
Faculty
Officers
FAQ
Apply Now
Courses
Honors

About

A little history

Community

Learning

Service