Liberal arts college in Savannah, Georgia
Ralston College is a liberal arts college[1] in Savannah, Georgia. It started accepting graduate students in the summer of 2022.[2]
History
In 2006, Stephen Blackwood and James Atkins Pritchard began fundraising for the establishment of an institution of higher education. Ralston was incorporated in the State of Georgia in 2010.[3] Among the members of its Board of Visitors are Vernon Smith, Heather Mac Donald, Harry Lewis, Ruth Wisse, Roger Kimball, and Jordan Peterson who was appointed Chancellor in May 2022.[4][5][6]
Ralston's first class of in-person MA students began classes in the fall of 2022. The first term was held in Greece and focused on learning Modern and Ancient Greek; this was followed by three terms in Savannah, GA,[7] with classes held in the education building of St. John's Episcopal Church.[8]
Academics
Ralston's motto is the Latin phrase Animus crescat. The motto uses the full semantic range of the word animus, and can be translated into English in multiple ways. The three translations in use by the college are “Let your mind expand”, “Let your spirit rise”, and “Let your courage thrive”.[9]
Its curriculum focuses on the liberal arts.[1] Blackwood has stated that Ralston aims “to play a role in the renewal of the conditions for human flourishing”.[10] It also offers one online short-course, run in conjunction with the FutureLearn platform, on Samuel Johnson's Rasselas.[11][12][13]
Accreditation
The College has been authorized for operation and awarded degree-granting powers by the State of Georgia.[10] The College is not yet accredited, but expects to achieve accreditation on a normal timeline (five to eight years from its first graduation).[14]
Reception
In February 2023, during Ralston's first MA year, the English literature scholar Mark Bauerlein visited the College, reporting that “the climate is critical and forensic, smart and disputatious in a nicely collegial way…. Blackwood and his colleagues have formed a little heaven on earth, a monastic academic interlude with genius and talent, collegiality in the etymological sense (“reading together”), guided by attentive, learned professors.” [15] Around the same time, the literary theorist Stanley Fish said of his attendance at a Ralston seminar on Homer’s Iliad that it was “amazing” that “conversations between the students and the faculty member were being conducted in Greek. And six months before this course began, no student in it — and there were about 25 — had any knowledge whatsoever of the Greek language or Greek culture.”[16] In March 2023, another member of Ralston's Board of Visitors, Harvey Silverglate, resigned his position.[17] After an initial visit in May 2023, Lawrence Schall, President of the New England Commission of Higher Education, observed of the MA cohort that “a more fascinating (and intense) group of young people you will never meet.” [18]
