Meet Dan Daugherty, the executive director of Alcuin Study Center, an educational non-profit adjacent to Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. After gaining over a decade of experience in college ministry and spending twelve years teaching humanities at a classical Christian school, Dan and some of his friends founded the centre in 2020 during the pandemic lockdown. Inspired by the timeless wisdom of Alcuin of York and the Venerable Bede, Dan and his team strive to cultivate an environment where questions concerning our shared humanity are approached with humility and sincerity.
Dan Daugherty, executive director of Alcuin Study Center, joins attendees of the centre’s event, A Well-Tuned Life: The Music of Human Flourishing, to listen to Andrew Crow’s talk on faith and music.
As Dan puts it, “We saw the need for a third place—a place where the academy and the church could meet to participate in honest, charitable discourse surrounding enduring human questions. What is beauty or goodness? What does it mean to be human?” At Alcuin, they believe that education, dialogue, humour, prayer, and friendship are the keys to creating a society that values the preservation and passing on of all that is true, good, and beautiful from one generation to another. “Rather than violence, Alcuin advocated for these principles,” Dan explains, highlighting that “Alcuin himself convinced Charlemagne to stop lopping off the heads of those who wouldn’t believe.”
The Alcuin Study Center is a member of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers, which traces its roots to institutions like L’Abri, Regent College (Vancouver), and Ligonier Valley Study Center. In the words of Alcuin, “Irrigate their lands with learning.” Dan and the team at Alcuin Study Center are doing just that, one conversation at a time.
