Hephzibah
Mountain Aster Academy
About Us
HMAA's Vision, Code of Ethics, and History
Our Vision
By means of a rich conception of our personal humanity that is complicated, enlivened, and transformed through relational care and trustworthiness, the Rector, Fellows, and Board of Trustees of the Hephzibah Mountain Aster Academy aim at nurturing young researchers into creative, critically insightful, and humanely engaging persons. Our institution and each of its members is motivated by four imperatives, put into a four-sentence teaching created by the Founding Rector:
Love in and by Christ’s Spirit;
Learn with humble openness;
Explore with courageous truthfulness;
Create what is pleasing to God and honorable before others.
History of HMAA
Cross-cultural philosophical and religious explorations developed through a career of nearly forty years of university level teaching has profoundly transformed the HMAA Rector and brought about various convictions that were rooted in a number of key pedagogical principles and basic hermeneutic understandings about humanities research.
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Re-appreciating the Socratic maieutic method of teaching, paralleled by dialogic instruction interactions between teachers and students in Ruist (“Confucian”) traditions of learning, as means to enrich more or less impersonal forms of mass education
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Integrating close readings of texts with reflective assessments of the level of understanding gained from such exercises
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Carefully and critically reconsidering the main research question that drives a research project forward as the researcher becomes aware of her/his own epistemological limits, habitual shortcomings in learning, and developed strengths that can move them into overcoming those limits and shortcomings.
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A relatively rigorous and consistent form of accountability between mentor and mentee on pre-designed tasks related to the research project
June
2022
The First HMAA Mentee arrived.
(Yes, even before we were officially established!)
August
2022
The Academy was officially established in the State of Colorado.
September
2023
The Academy was given non-profit status by the IRS.
September
2024
Our First Cross-Cultural Conference arranged for the Guangxi Normal University Press took place and was held at the beautiful location of Glen Eyrie Conference Center in Colorado.
Our Code of Ethics
Hephzibah Mountain Aster Academy's Rector, Board of Trustees, Mentors, Intercessors, and other associated volunteers and staff will seek to embody the following cross-cultural mandates.
Think carefully about, and seek to embody,
whatever is true, noble, right, pure,
lovely, admirable, excellent and/or praiseworthy.
(based on Philippians 4: 8)