Welcome Dr. Joseph Torres - our new Math and Science teacher!
Chesterton Academy of St. George is happy to announce the hiring of its second full time teacher for the 2022-2023 school year: Dr. Joseph Torres, who will be teaching math, science, and choir for our first students.
Dr. Torres entered the Catholic Church in his freshman year of college at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he earned his BS in Mathematics in 2011. He then taught high school mathematics in South Louisiana for three years during which time, he encountered Euclid for the first time and fell in love with the elegance of The Elements. In his last year of teaching high school, God called him to graduate school, and so the following year, he began his doctoral studies at Texas A&M University. There, he was privileged to become a member of a local chant group and eventually became the director of that group until he finished his PhD in Mathematics in 2020. He then taught remedial and entry-level college mathematics for two years at Victoria College on the Texas Gulf Coast.
An expert mathematician and devout Catholic, Dr. Torres will bring to his students a deep appreciation for how math reveals the ordered beauty of God’s creation. He says “When we study math, we start by studying very concrete things (such as how many apples are in this cart?) but progress to more transcendent truths (every whole number has a unique breakdown into prime factors). This is the same way that St. Thomas says we learn about God -- we progress from concrete experiences to realizations. I love helping my students practice this art with math because math is true and beautiful and it strengthens the mind so that it can progress to the Most True and the Most Beautiful.”
Dr. Torres says that he discovered the true beauty of a liberal arts education when he was still in college. Having gone to university to get a degree to get a job, when he encountered St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University, it changed the way he perceived education.
“One summer when I was working on my Bachelor's degree, I read St. John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University and there encountered for the first time the idea that education was to lead us to truth for its own sake. This caused me to completely re-evaluate my life, the education I had received, and the goals it had instilled in me. I got into teaching so that I could bring this reality to my students: that the Truth (Who is Jesus Christ) is worth pursuing for itself, not merely for the material benefits it may be able to bring us.”
Mr. Anderson, headmaster of Chesterton Academy of St. George, is excited to have Dr. Torres become part of the founding faculty because of Dr. Torres’s strong integration of math and faith. “Oftentimes today, there is a mistaken notion in our culture that a mathematical mind is antithetical to a believing mind. Many young Catholics, when they leave the faith in college, say they stop believing in religion because they have started to believe in science. Dr. Torres’ expertise in math and how it leads to God will be a living example for our students of the close relationship between faith and reason.”
Dr. Torres is excited to be moving from Texas to Michigan this summer to become part of the Chesterton Academy community. In your charity, keep him in your prayers!