William Perales
Director
William Perales has worked in Catholic education for over twenty years as a teacher and principal at both the elementary and high school levels. A graduate of the St. Ignatius Institute’s Catholic Great Books Program at the University of San Francisco where he majored in English and Philosophy, William also holds degrees in Theology (MA), Philosophy (MA), and Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (M.Ed.). He has led and assisted schools transitioning to a classical liberal arts vision, designed curriculum for grades K-12, led professional development workshops, and designed and led instruction for a diocesan catechist formation program. In the Diocese of Fort Worth, he served on their Curriculum Committee and assisted with developing and communicating the Catholic classical vision for diocesan Catholic schools. He helped establish and led instruction in Fort Worth’s New Teacher Formation Institute, introducing new teachers to the vision of Catholic education while forming them in instructional approaches that are rooted in the liberal arts tradition of cultivating the imagination, faith, virtue, and wisdom.
Dr. Shannon K. Valenzuela
Assistant Director; Affiliate Assistant Professor of Humanities
Dr. Shannon K. Valenzuela is an Affiliate Assistant Professor of Humanities and Assistant Director of the St. Ambrose Center. She is the writer and director of The Quest, a limited television series produced by the University of Dallas about discovering one’s purpose and living it with courage.
Dr. Laura Eidt
Director, Living Latin Curriculum Project; Affiliate Assistant Professor of Modern Languages; Humanities Program Director
Dr. Laura Eidt received her BA in English Literature and Linguistics from the University of Hamburg (Germany) and her MA and PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin. She has been teaching in the Spanish, German, Comparative Literature, and Humanities Programs at the University of Dallas since 2006 and published on German and Spanish poetry, and on Ekphrasis. For many years she taught an applied foreign language pedagogy class that sent students to local area schools to teach their language to elementary children, and she was a mentor at a bilingual school in Dallas for four years. Her courses include classes on Foreign Language Pedagogy, Teaching Classical Children’s Literature, and Great Works in the Modern World. She is the faculty advisor for UD’s Classical Curriculum team and is completing a Latin curriculum for K-5rd grade.