Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

~Thomas Jefferson

Our fall personal development courses will open for registration July 15, and in honor of Independence Day, we want to highlight one of our upcoming courses, "The Multifaceted Life of Thomas Jefferson".

This fall, noted scholar John B. Boles, Ph.D., the William Pettus Hobby Professor of History at Rice University and former Thomas Jefferson Foundation Fellow at the University of Virginia, will lead students through the life of one of America's Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson. Dr. Boles co-edited "Seeing Jefferson Anew: In His Times and Ours" and is currently writing a full-scale biography of Thomas Jefferson.

The course will offer an overview of his career, his political and religious ideas, his tenuous relationship with France, his complicated and tragic involvement with slavery and his fascination with the West. Thomas Jefferson remains one of our most talented and controversial leaders, and the journey through his lifetime with such an exceptional historian as Dr. Boles will very likely be enlightening and inspiring.

Join us for "The Multifaceted Life of Thomas Jefferson "beginning October 1, 2014. Happy Fourth of July!

Bonus: You can see Dr. Boles enthusiasm for Thomas Jefferson in this video from Rice University's Fondren Library's The Books that Shaped My World lecture series.

This is a video of Dr. John Boles speaking to a group about his interest in the life of Thomas Jefferson.