It’s been a busy October at St. John’s College. Here’s a taste of what’s been happening on our campuses!

• Students describe summer internship experiences. At the Summer Experience Fair on the Santa Fe campus students talked about their summer internships, paid for by college grants, which included museum curation, marine biology, cancer research, and study abroad in Rome. Some of the presenters  are pictured below!

Kahlieh Bernstein, Victor Breidenbach, Peerawat Chiaranunt and Nathan Dignazio studied at the Rome Institute of Liberal Arts. Dongyu Cui interned at City of Hope, a cancer treatment and research center in southern California. Leah Mozzer interned at the Honolulu Museum, the largest art museum in Hawaiʻi. Jinxue Chen studied with SEA, a program devoted to “understanding and stewardship of marine and maritime environments,” in The Phoenix Islands.

• The St. John’s Crew Team is hard at work. Fall intramural season also means soccer, ultimate Frisbee, and, on the Annapolis campus, Athenian Reasonball, flag football’s slightly nerdier sibling. Archery is in full swing on the Santa Fe campus, as are sailing and fencing in Annapolis. In Santa Fe the famous Iron Bookworm club has returned for another year, featuring an “intense combination of traditional calisthenics, martial arts conditioning, and Chinese and Indian wrestling exercises!”

• Friday Night Lectures Series. October brought captivating lectures on both campuses, given both by members of the St. John’s community and distinguished guests. Guest lecturers included Francis Fukuyama, of the Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, who delivered a timely lecture  entitled “Political Order and Political Decay: The American Political System in a Time of Global Upheaval.” As ever, lectures were followed by lively question periods.

• Community Seminars. Community seminars are open to community members, and are offered on both campuses each semester. October seminars included an intensive look at J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King. Led by tutor Krishnan Venkatesh, participants took a close look at the third book in Tolkien’s seminal “Lord of the Rings” series over the course of six two-hour seminar discussions.

• Trick or Treating for Canned Goods. Project Polity hit the streets for a good cause, collecting 486 pounds of food to donate to local food bank! Trick or Treating for Canned Goods is just of one of several initiatives spearheaded by the student-run community service group.

• St. John’s received a $50 million gift last week from two of our alumni in business!  Ron Fielding (A70) and Warren Spector (A81) donated $25 million each. We’re very thankful to Mr. Fielding and Mr. Spector!