ALAN SCHAEFFER is the Vice President of Honest Education. Alan just moved to Fresno, CA with his wife, Joyce, and their four home educated children. For 16 years Alan was owner of a small bicycle shop in rural Connecticut. He is also a skilled carpenter. Alan majored in philosophy at Gordon College. As both a mechanic and philosopher he has always had a passion to understand how things work (or don't) and why. Educational alternatives were not enough. Alan and Joyce knew they and their children must come to understand the causes of the declining culture in order to know how to live and do good in it. These questions lead him nine years ago to the first SepCon and to support the Alliance from the beginning.

Alan Schaeffer

Bruce Shortt

BRUCE SHORTT is a graduate of Amherst College, Harvard Law School, has a Ph.D. from Stanford University, was a Fulbright Scholar, and serves on the board of directors of both the Houston Ebony Music Society and the Exodus Mandate. Mr. Shortt is a member of North Oaks Baptist Church and currently practices law in Houston, Texas, where he resides with his wife and their sons. Mr. and Mrs. Shortt believe strongly in homeschooling and homeschool their sons. Bruce Shortt and T.C. Pinckney were co-sponsors of the Christian Education Resolution submitted for consideration at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, calling for pastors to encourage their flock to remove their children from tax-funded schools and establish private Christian schools in the Sunday School classrooms.

DAN SMITHWICK founded the Nehemiah Institute in 1986 and authored the first version of the PEERS Test. Dan continues to serve as president of the Institute with particular focus on new product development and CFO responsibilities. He also serves as a member of the executive committee of the Coalition on Revival (COR), which is a ministry that provides high-level worldview training in all major areas of society. Mr. Smithwick received a B.S. degree in mathematics/education in 1972 from North Dakota State University. He subsequently entered into business management with AT&T for 20 years and then with several small business firms in upper management positions. Beyond business, he also has been active in Christian education work for over 20 years. He served as board member of several Christian schools and taught in a private school for one year.

Dan Smithwick

Michael Strong

MICHAEL STRONG has been the founding director of a Paideia charter high school, the founding headmaster of a private school for gifted students, and the founding director of private Montessori middle school programs. Michael is the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice, a book on Socratic methods in the classroom and has consulted for hundreds of public, charter, private, and parochial schools around the world. He is currently completing a second book, Whole Lives: The Creation of Conscious Culture Through Educational Innovation, which shows how educational freedom will result in new and better ways of life.

JOSEPH SOBRAN received his B.A. in English from Eastern Michigan University and did graduate studies in English, specializing in Shakespeare. In 1972, he went to work for National Review Magazine, beginning what would be a 21-year stint, including 18 years as senior editor. From 1979 to 1991, Mr. Sobran was a regular commentator on CBS Radio's "Spectrum" series. He has been a nationally syndicated columnist since 1979, first with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, then with the Universal Press Syndicate. He also writes the weekly column "Washington Watch" for The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper. Mr. Sobran is the author of three books: Single Issues: Essays on the Crucial Social Questions (1983), Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time (1997) and his most recent book, Hustler: The Clinton Legacy (2000). He is currently writing a book on the abandonment of the Constitution.

Joseph Sobran