Catholic Leadership Institute Faculty

Gwen Adams
Director, Catholic Leadership Institute
Gwen Adams teaches at Trinity School at River Ridge, Eagan, Minnesota. She has taught Ancient and Medieval History, Literature and Composition, Introductory Science, Old Testament, and Catholic Doctrine. She also currently interns at a local farm called the Dodge Nature Center, studying small sustainable agriculture practices consonant with Catholic Social Teaching. She has also served as Director of Youth Formation at St. Boniface Parish in Lafayette, Indiana, and run a household community for Catholic undergraduates at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has published in St. Austin Review, and holds a B.A. in History from Christendom College and an M.A. in Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas.
 

 
Denis Kitzinger
Fellow at Thomas More College
Mr. Denis Kitzinger is a native of Flörsheim, Germany, a town near to the approximate birth place of Einhard, the early 8th century Frankish scholar who was the noble servant to Charlemagne as well as his biographer. Having grown up in a town with rich Catholic traditions, Mr. Kitzinger shares joyful memories of St. Martin’s Day parades to the Church courtyard where St Martin arrived on horseback, cut his military-cloak in two, and shared it with a beggar – a tradition alive to this day.In his youth and early adulthood Mr. Kitzinger spent much time on the soccer field, an occupation which earned him a full athletic scholarship to a university in the South. Since he first arrived in 2002 he has lived in all four corners of the United States, from Tennessee to California, from Michigan to West Virginia to New Hampshire.

From 2006 to 2007, after completing his master’s degree on the West Coast, he spent an invaluable year at the Russell Kirk Center in Michigan. From 2008 to 2010 he and his wife Sara lived in lovely Scotland where he began pursuing his doctorate with the University of St Andrews on the intellectual life of Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977). Formally invested in the history of ideas, he especially enjoys teaching subjects pertaining to history, political philosophy, ethics, and literature. In his view, the ideal of a college community as a community of learners and seekers of wisdom is beautifully realized at Thomas More College.His favorite authors include Josef Pieper, J.R.R. Tolkien, and his holiness Pope Benedict XVI. Happy and blessed to be in the United States, he is and remains an advocate of things German such as Christmas markets and, especially, German beer.