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Dear Alumni, Students, and Friends,
 Season’s Greetings from the Classics Department! I hope you all have enjoyed a pleasant year. Things have been busy here in the department. On the student side, we reached 60 majors and minors this past year! On the faculty side, John Heath has moved into the first year of phased retirement, teaching one class for us in 2025-2026 and one final class in 2026-2027, which meant we were able to hire a new two-year Lecturer, Kate Melberg (see her profile below). We are also proud to announce that Daniel Turkeltaub received the John B. Drahmann Award for Advising from the College of Arts and Sciences in September for his excellent work in advising undergraduates in various capacities at SCU. Congratulations, Dr. Turkeltaub!
We have been hard at work on several initiatives, particularly related to Study Abroad opportunities. In 2024-2025, we joined an archaeological consortium with Baylor University. In Summer 2026, Carolynn Roncaglia will take students to Italy for just over 2 weeks, starting in San Giuliano (about an hour northwest of Rome) to work with the team from Baylor, along with side trips to various sites (Orvieto, Assisi, Rome, etc.). We are also looking to develop future trips to other ancient sites, including Greece and Sicily. These programs would rotate every couple years, in the hopes of enabling any interested Classics major or minor to join at least one summer excursion. In order to make these opportunities as accessible as possible, we have been seeking out funding opportunities, and in November 2025, our department, in collaboration with Anthropology, secured a multi-year gift agreement from a donor to help students participate in archaeology-related experiences. Thank you to Dr. Roncaglia and Dr. Lee Panich from Anthropology for your great work on this!
We have also been involved in promoting the study of and conversations about democracy on and around campus. In Winter and Spring 2025, Nicholas Lindberg and Dan Turkeltaub organized discussions with faculty members in various departments across campus in the hopes of creating programming for students both inside and outside the classroom. This year, Classics is co-sponsoring (along with Political Science and the Provost’s Office) a series of talks on democracy, one of which is also our upcoming Winter Speaker, Josiah Ober from Stanford. See more information about his talk below.
We always are looking to improve student experiences inside the classroom. One new initiative is the creation of more advanced language tracks within our upper division Greek and Latin offerings, which we have deemed “M-courses” (m from the Latin magis or Greek mallon, both of which mean ‘more’). For students with more years of language experience, the M-course offers the ability to read more Latin or Greek at an accelerated pace. We have also expanded the types of projects which students can choose to complete their capstone experience in their senior year. And finally, we are pleased to announce that after its launch in Fall 2024, the Medical and Health Humanities minor, which is co-housed in the departments of Classics and History, graduated its first two students in Spring 2025. Over 30 students have now added the minor! Thank you to Dr. Turkeltaub and Dr. Matthew Newsom Kerr from History for all your work in putting this exciting new minor together.
Last but not least, Heidi Elmore, our department manager for the last two years, had to resign for medical reasons in November. While we will miss Heidi, we are excited to welcome our new Department Manager, Julia Kovatch ‘23. Julia began her duties for our department in the first week of December. Check out her profile below.
We wish you all a wonderful holiday season and a very happy new year! Please feel free to reach out to us anytime. We always enjoy hearing from you!
Sincerely,
Lissa Crofton-Sleigh
Chair, Department of Classics
P.S. The image above is a photo from Carolynn Roncaglia's trip over Thanksgiving break to Croatia. For another image of her trip, see Dr. Roncaglia's update below.
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