Published: August 25, 2009 09:03 pm         

OU professor brings lecture series to Enid

A popular University of Oklahoma professor of classics will return to Enid for a new series of lectures this fall.

J. Rufus Fears, David Ross Boyd professor of classics at OU, will present a series of lectures titled “Lessons in Leadership through the Great Books.”

The first lecture will be 7 p.m., Sept. 14 at Montgomery Hall on the campus of Northern Oklahoma College Enid. The free presentation is open to the public.

Fears will discuss “Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography” for the first in a series of lessons. Future lectures will take place in Montgomery Hall at 7 p.m. and will include William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” Oct. 12; Homer’s “The Iliad,” Nov. 9; Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” Jan. 11; and Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” Feb. 8.

Fears’ discussions of the Great Books have appeared in newspapers across the country and have aired on national television and radio.

Fears holds the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty. He also serves as David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center named Fears as scholar in residence for the Leadership Institute, its educational arm. In this capacity he leads the center in a variety of educational programs to teach leadership principles exemplified by those who settled the Cherokee Strip and through their perseverance developing northwest Oklahoma.

In 2010, Fears will teach the Educator’s Leadership Institute June 7-10. The program will be a four-day educator’s seminar, “America’s Legacy of Leadership,” as a three-credit, graduate-level course. Fears will discuss leadership in America since the Civil War. Field trips highlighting leaders in the Cherokee Strip will be scheduled each afternoon.

Scholarships to cover all costs of the seminar are available through CSRHC until May 10, 2010, with class registration open through June.

The four-day educator’s seminar will provide an opportunity for kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers to learn lessons of leadership based on Civil War leaders’ experiences and discover how these lessons can be applied across the curriculum at all levels.

To register, contact Andi Holland, president of CSRHC, at 234-8999 or visit the center’s Web site, www.regionalheritagecenter.org.