Alumni
The Voegelin Graduate Alumni Network includes former students of political theory
at Louisiana State University–as their first or second examination field, or as regular
participants in our programs–who have gone on to careers in education, law, government,
and business. Many are published authors, and some are editors of journals or book
series in Political Science or related fields. (Degrees are in Political Science
unless otherwise indicated.)
Adetoyese Adedipe is a Market Planning and Strategy Specialist at Cummins Inc. in Minnesota. He wrote his masters thesis with Ellis Sandoz on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
M.A., 2011 – Louisiana State University
Phillip J. Ardoin is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Government and Justice Studies at
Appalachian State University. From 2014-2022 he was co-editor with Paul Gronke of P.S.: Political Science and Politics, published by the American Political Science Association.
M.A., 1994; Ph.D., 1999 – Louisiana State University
Alan Baily is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stephen F. Austin State University. He has published on Thomas Carlyle and has written on Plato, Hegel, and Voegelin.
M.A., 2003; Ph.D, 2006 – Louisiana State University
Clint Barron teaches social studies at Parkview Baptist High School in Baton Rouge.
M.A., 2004 – Louisiana State University
clint.barron@parkviewbaptist.com
Daniel Bollich works as a Health, Safety, and Environmental rep in Houston, Texas. His thesis, defended in the summer of 2017 is titled “Unlikely Allies: A Case Study on Cross-Class Protest in Guatemala.”
M.A., 2017 – Louisiana State University
Matthew Connell is proprietor of Todd’s General Store in Todd, North Carolina. He has taught Political Science at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, and at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
M.A., 2009; Ph.D., 2015 – Louisiana State University
Andrea Conque is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. She taught previously at Our Lady of the Lake College in Baton Rouge.
M.A., 2002 (Philosophy); Ph.D., 2016 – Louisiana State University
Elizabeth Campbell Corey is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Honors Program at Baylor University. She is the author of Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics (Missouri, 2006) and a frequent contributor to First Things and other prominent publications; she sits on the board of the Institute for Religion and Public Life. During 2018-19 she served as the American Enterprise Institute Values and Capitalism Visiting Professor.
Ph.D., 2004 – Louisiana State University
Richard N. Engstrom is Associate Director of the Institute for Governmental Service and Research at the University of Maryland. He has taught at Wyoming, Georgia State, Kennesaw State, and Nazarbayev Universities, and is Deputy Director of the Southern Political Science Association.
M.A., 1994 – Louisiana State University
Ph.D., 2001 – Rice University
Montgomery C. Erfourth is a Colonel in the United States Army, having transferred after sixteen years as a U.S. Marine. A strategic planner, he served in Iraq, across the Middle East and Asia, and with several Special Operations Commands, earning his degree on sabbatical from the Army. A revised version of his thesis was published in 2019 as A Guide to Understanding Eric Voegelin’s Political Reality (St. Augustine Press).
M.A., 2013 – Louisiana State University
Ed Findlay is a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, specializing in public diplomacy, educational exchange, and democratic development. He has served at U.S. embassies in Brunei Darussalam, Nicaragua, and Bulgaria, and in Washington DC. He has lectured at American University and is the author of Caring for the Soul in a Postmodern Age: Politics and Phenomenology in the Thought of Jan Patocka (SUNY ’02) and other publications.
Ph.D., 2000 – Louisiana State University
Jeffrey Herndon is Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University, Commerce. He is the author of Eric Voegelin and the Problem of Christian Political Order (Missouri, 2007).
Ph.D., 2003 – Louisiana State University
Sean Illing lives in Washington, D.C., and covers politics, science and literature for vox.com. His dissertation was a study of Albert Camus’ political morality.
Ph.D., 2014 – Louisiana State University
Mark Johnson is Instructor of Political Science and History at Minnesota State Community and Technical College in Moorhead. He has been program chair of the American Political Science Association’s Conference on Teaching & Learning and is now co-editor of the APSA’s Journal of Political Science Education.
M.A., 1994 – Louisiana State University
Branwell DuBose Kapeluck is Professor and Chair of Political Science at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He is co-editor of three books on Southern politics and presidential elections, and he has also written on public finance.
M.A., 1997 – North Carolina State University
Ph.D., 2001 – Louisiana State University
Morgan Knull is an associate real estate broker with RE/MAX Gateway in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding states. While studying political theory at LSU, he was the founding editor of the Civil War Book Review.
Thomas Laehn was elected County Attorney in Greene County, Iowa, in 2018, and he teaches on an adjunct basis in the Department of Political Science at Drake University. Author of Pliny’s Defense of Empire (Routledge, 2013), he taught for several years at McNeese State University.
M.A., 2008; Ph.D., 2010 – Louisiana State University
J.D., 2017 – University of Iowa
John Randolph LeBlanc is Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Tyler, where he also serves as Graduate Advisor. He is the author of several books, most recently Ancient and Modern Religion and Politics [with Carolyn Jones Medine] (Palgrave 2012) and Edward Said on the Prospects of Peace in Palestine and Israel (Palgrave, 2013).
Ph.D., 1997 – Louisiana State University
Jeremy Mhire is Joe D. Waggonner Professor of Political Science at Louisiana Tech, where he directs the Waggonner Center for Civic Engagement and Public Policy at Tech and helps organize the university’s Cyber-Discovery Initiative. In 2018-19 he was Visiting Professor in the Columbia College Core Curriculum at Columbia University in New York City; he has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Virginia and at Harvard University. Together with Bryan-Paul Frost, he is editor of The Political Theory of Aristophanes: Explorations in Poetic Wisdom (SUNY, 2015).
M.A., 2002; Ph.D., 2006 – Louisiana State University
Glenn Moots is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Political Science at Northwood University. He is the author of Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology (Missouri, 2010), and his work has appeared in the journal American Political Thought. His co-edited volume, Justifying Revolution: Law, Virtue, and Violence in the American War of Independence, was published in 2018 by the University of Oklahoma Press. In 2013-14 he was a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton.
M.A., 1993; M.A., 2008 (Philosophy); Ph.D., 2007 – Louisiana State University
W. King Mott is Associate Professor of Political Science and Women and Gender Studies at Seton Hall University and has published in what is called queer theory.
M.A., 1989; Ph.D., 1997 – Louisiana State University
Todd Myers is Professor of Political Economy at Grossmont College and Lecturer for the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies and Department of Economics at San Diego State University. He has published a wide range of articles in academic encyclopedias including topics such as Asian political thought, the political thought of E.F. Schumacher, Chinese and Japanese political history, and political economy.
M.P.A., 1992; Ph.D., 1997 – Louisiana State University
Pete Petrakis is Associate Professor of Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. He is the editor, with Cecil Eubanks, of Eric Voegelin’s Dialogue with the Postmoderns: Searching for Foundations (Missouri, 2004).
M.A. – University of Southern Mississippi
Ph.D., 1998 – Louisiana State University
Jeremiah Russell is Headmaster at St. John Paul II Catholic High School in Huntsville, Alabama, after serving as principal of Sacred Heart Catholic School in Anniston. Previously Assistant Professor of Political Science at Jacksonville State University and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia 2010-2012, his research on political thought in late antiquity has appeared in History of Political Thoughtand the Review of Politics.
M.A., 2006 (Religion and Politics) – Baylor University
Ph.D., 2010 – Louisiana State University
William Schulz is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lone Star College in the Houston, Texas, area, where he is Lead Faculty for Dual Credit Instruction. His dissertation was titled “Dorothy Day’s Distributism and her Vision for Catholic Politics.”
M.A., 2008 (History) – Southeastern Louisiana University
M.A., 2009 (Philosophy); J.D., 2016; Ph.D., 2017 – Louisiana State University
Scott Segrest is Associate Professor of Political Science at The Citadel, where he has taught since 2013; he has also taught at Baylor University, the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and the United States Military Academy (West Point). He is the author of America and the Political Philosophy of Common Sense (Missouri, 2009).
M.A., 1996 – University of Dallas
Ph.D., 2005 – Louisiana State University
William Paul Simmons is Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Honors Interdisciplinary Faculty at the University of Arizona. He taught Political Science for a decade at Arizona State University and before that at Bethany College in West Virginia. He is the author of Human Rights and the Marginalized Other (Cambridge, 2011) and editor of two other books on human rights.
M.A., 1992; Ph. D., 1996 – Louisiana State University
williamsimmons@email.arizona.edu
Angela C. Miceli Stout is an independent scholar and was recently a postdoctoral fellow at the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona Spain with the Instituto de Cultura y Sociedad. Her dissertation on the political importance of Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of conscience is under revision for publication, and she has published articles on liberal arts education and on conscience in Aquinas and Arendt.
Ph.D., 2013 – Louisiana State University
Drew Kennedy Thompson teaches AP Government at Murray High School in Kentucky, where he previously taught Humanities at Murray State University. He wrote his dissertation on “The Political Imagination of Cormac McCarthy.” He is also an award-winning singer-songwriter.
M.A., 2009; Ph.D., 2017 – Louisiana State University
Riley Valentine teaches at the McDonough School outside Baltimore, Maryland. Her dissertation has been published as Progressive Liberalism and Neoliberalism in American Politics: The Heterodoxical Imperative (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).
Bryan Vincent is Director of the Governmental Affairs Division in the staff office of the Louisiana House of Representatives.
M.A. 1990; Ph.D., 1993 – Louisiana State University
Gabriela Vitela was for several years Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisiana Lafayette; she now lives in New Mexico and works as a data analyst. Her dissertation is “Money In and Money Out: The Effects of Race and Gender on Campaign Finance.”
M.A., 2014; Ph.D., 2019 – Louisiana State University
David Whitney is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Social Sciences at Nicholls State University. His book, Maladies of Modernity: Scientism and the Deformations of Political Order, was published in 2019 by St. Augustine’s Press.
Ph.D., 2010 – Louisiana State University
