Who We Are

Thomas Fickley
Headmaster and Founder

Thomas is a native of Charlottesville, Virginia. He earned his BA and MA in History, and wrote his Master’s thesis on the history of American educational philosophy. He has been teaching high school history, philosophy, government, and literature for ten years in independent boarding and day schools, where he also coached numerous sports at the varsity and junior varsity levels. Thomas received his Anglican formation at All Saints Anglican church in Ivy, Virginia, which has been his family’s parish home since 2013.

Thomas’ enthusiasm for mentoring and inspiring young men comes from years of practice in the field, and from the joys of raising six sons and a daughter with his cheerful and brave wife, Natalie. Thomas has won several teaching awards, including two Golden Apple Awards (one at each school he has served in) and the Living Well Award at the Covenant School. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Mars Hill Audio Journal, and the Board of Directors at St. George Classical School in Lexington, Virginia.

Thomas seeks to encounter as much of the Good, True, and Beautiful in his daily endeavors as he can. Aside from teaching, his most enjoyed activities include timber framing, playing bluegrass banjo, reading both the Good and Great books, camping with his family, reading to his children, brewing strong coffee, reciting poetry, and splitting wood by hand.

Fr. Mark Perkins
Chaplain and Assistant Headmaster

Fr. Mark Perkins recently moved back to central Virginia with his wife and three children to help launch St. Dunstan’s Academy. Fr. Perkins is a graduate of Hillsdale College (BA, 2009) and Trinity School for Ministry (MAR, 2019).

Prior to entering ministry full-time, he taught for nine years at The Covenant School in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he also coached basketball and soccer. He was awarded the Rotary Club’s Mentor Award after his first semester of teaching. In 2019, Bishop Walter Grundorf ordained Fr. Perkins to the priesthood on the Feast of St. Wenceslas (September 28). Before he became Chaplain and Assistant Headmaster at St. Dunstan’s, he served for three years as Curate at St. Alban’s Anglican Cathedral in Oviedo, Florida.

Fr. Perkins played rugby at Hillsdale College and then in a men’s league after college and looks forward to introducing the boys to the sport. His love for the human scale of traditional village life and for regenerative farming emerged during a couple months working on a biodynamic organic farm in rural Upper Franconia, Germany after college. His writing on education, theology, and history has been published in Christianity Today and Public Discourse, among other places. He also serves as Executive Editor for Earth & Altar (earthaltar.org) and on the Domestic Missions Team for the Diocese of the Eastern United States of the Anglican Province of America.

The Most Reverend Chandler Jones
Board Member

Bishop Jones SSC is Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Province of America and Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of the Eastern United States. 50 years old, he is a native of Surry County, North Carolina. A graduate of Emory and Henry College (BA, 1993) and Duke University Divinity School (MDiv, 1996), with graduate studies at Dominican House of Studies, Washington, DC, he has been priested for twenty-five years and has served seven congregations in Virginia, Maryland, Florida, and Georgia. For thirteen years, he served as Rector of Saint Barnabas Anglican Cathedral, Atlanta, Georgia. He was consecrated to the Episcopate in 2010. He has also studied English literature at Exeter College, University of Oxford, England and Anglican history at the King’s School, Canterbury Cathedral. A convert to the Continuing Anglican Church movement, he has been a Continuing Anglo-Catholic for over thirty years. He is married to Megan Jones née Baskwill (2000) and has four children.

Fr. Sean McDermott
Board Member

Fr. Sean McDermott is Rector of All Saints Anglican Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. He grew up in southwest Virginia and is a graduate of Hillsdale College (B.A.) and Trinity School for Ministry (MTS). Prior to entering full-time ministry, he taught Latin at The Covenant School for eight years. While teaching, he held a variety of roles from coaching, Dean of Middle School, and assistant to the Head of Middle School. He was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Walter Grundorf on February 24, 2018, being the Feast of St. Matthias, Apostle and Martyr, and served as curate at All Saints from August 2018 until his institution as rector in January 2024. He and his wife, Julie, have four children and live in Charlottesville.

Randy Caldejon
Board Member

Randy Caldejon is an engineer, innovator, and entrepreneur. His professional accomplishments include serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during the first Gulf War, starting successful technology ventures, and co-founding an Anglican church.

Randy and his wife, Mary, own a small farm and vineyard outside of Charlottesville, VA, where they have raised their two daughters. During his spare time, he enjoys gravel biking, learning about viticulture, and experimenting with agriculture technologies.

Randy holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and a Master of Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). With a keen interest in understanding the theology and ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), Randy is pursuing a Master of Arts in Theological Studies at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Fr. Glenn Spencer
Board Member

Alex Elmore
Board Member

Alex Elmore is an Associate at Cooley LLP specializing in corporate law. He is a graduate of the Torrey Honors College at Biola University (BA, 2009), the University of Virginia Darden School of Business (MBA, 2019), and the University of Virginia School of Law (JD, 2019). He served on the Constitution and Canons Committee advising the Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic in the Anglican Church in North America. Alex lives with his wife and children in McLean, Virginia.

Thomas Fickley
Headmaster, Founder, and Board Member

Thomas is a native of Charlottesville, Virginia. He earned his BA and MA in History, and wrote his Master’s thesis on the history of American educational philosophy. He has been teaching high school history, philosophy, government, and literature for ten years in independent boarding and day schools, where he also coached numerous sports at the varsity and junior varsity levels. Thomas received his Anglican formation at All Saints Anglican church in Ivy, Virginia, which has been his family’s parish home since 2013.

Thomas’ enthusiasm for mentoring and inspiring young men comes from years of practice in the field, and from the joys of raising six sons and a daughter with his cheerful and brave wife, Natalie. Thomas has won several teaching awards, including two Golden Apple Awards (one at each school he has served in) and the Living Well Award at the Covenant School. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Mars Hill Audio Journal, and the Board of Directors at St. George Classical School in Lexington, Virginia.

Thomas seeks to encounter as much of the Good, True, and Beautiful in his daily endeavors as he can. Aside from teaching, his most enjoyed activities include timber framing, playing bluegrass banjo, reading both the Good and Great books, camping with his family, reading to his children, brewing strong coffee, reciting poetry, and splitting wood by hand.

Trae Bailey
Belmont Abbey College

Trae Bailey is a teacher and college administrator who prefers traditional things, ideas, and practices and resists educational trends that, like fashion, do not last. He served six years as an Army Logistics officer, mushed sled dogs in Alaska, taught in both coeducational and boys’ schools, and worked as Dean of Students at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts during the school’s final year. He currently serves as Director of Residence Life at Belmont Abbey College.

Mr. Bailey’s friendship with the St. Dunstan’s was formed at a traditional German pub with drinks, good conversation, and hearty laughs and forged in the battle with the bureaucratics that every new school in the modern age must endure. He believes in feasting and fasting and ordinary time spent with ordinary people caring for ordinary things. Mr. Bailey’s wife, Kassie, is a speech-language pathologist, and their family of seven enjoys cooking apple butter outside in a large copper pot and hosting literary dinners and folk/classical music events.

Andrew Belz
WORLD News Group

Andrew, a senior gift officer at WORLD News Group in Asheville, N.C., has a lifelong appreciation for elementary and secondary education. Prior to his stint at WORLD, he spent 30 years of his life in administration of Cono Christian School in Iowa. Cono was at the time a boarding and day school that served both local and international students through high school. The school continues today as a day school with a classical bent.

Andrew is married to Mary Anna. They have five children and 11 grandchildren. He is an active member of a local Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Asheville. He loves congregational singing, young people’s choirs and basic carpentry.

Fr. Alan Crippen
Holy Trinity Parish

Alan R. Crippen II is a clergyman and the rector of Holy Trinity Parish in Hillsdale, Michigan, a member congregation of the Diocese of the Living Word in the Anglican Church in North America. He has a professional background in both parish ministry and church planting as well as non-profit executive leadership. Father Crippen has worked for International Students, Inc., Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the Family Research Council in Washington D.C., the John Jay Institute (of which he is the founder), and American Bible Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At American Bible Society, he served as Executive Director of the Faith and Liberty Initiative, an innovative cultural strategy to engage all people in exploring the Bible as the “Good Book” and principal freedom text of American ideals and institutions. In this capacity he led content development for a $60 million-dollar project that included the creation and buildout of a high-tech interactive museum, general editorship of the Faith and Liberty Bible (2021), a historical application study bible, and the creative direction of content development for the Faith and Liberty Trail mobile app for both IOS and Android platforms. Father Crippen is also a U.S. Army veteran with both active-duty and reserve service including artillery platoon and battery command and battalion staff operations and planning. He was graduated from Cairn University with a bachelor’s degree and Westminster Theological Seminary with his master’s. He is the father of five adult children and thirteen grandchildren with his late wife, Michelle, who tragically died of cancer in 2020. He has since been remarried to Leonor Lee of Alexandria, Virginia, the widow of classical architect, Daniel Lee, and mother of four children and seven grandchildren. Together they make their home in Hillsdale, Michigan.

Fr. Gavin Dunbar
St. John’s Church

Fr. Gavin Dunbar has been rector of St. John’s Church (Savannah, GA) since 2006. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, he studied classics at the University of Toronto and Dalhousie University, Halifax; before studying theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto. He was ordained a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada in 1992 in the Diocese of Nova Scotia. After serving several years in a rural parish in Nova Scotia he came to St. John’s in 1997, as a Priest Assistant. He is President of the Prayer Book Society of the U. S. A. In his spare time, he enjoys the study of western art and architecture history (through books or travel) and listening to vocal music of the Renaissance and Baroque period.

Samuel Heisman
Great Hearts Baton Rouge

Sam Heisman is the Founding Head of School at Great Hearts Harveston, the first Great Hearts Academy in Louisiana. Prior to that, he built, launched, and developed Great Hearts Northern Oaks in San Antonio, Texas, as a founding administrator and then the Headmaster of the Upper School. It was an A-rated school every year under his leadership. Sam is a veteran classroom teacher, athletic coach, administrator, and institution builder with a passion for building a school culture to help teachers teach, parents parent, and students learn. He is a graduate of Hillsdale College (BA, 2010) and The University of Dallas (MA, 2022). Sam lives in Baton Rouge with his wife and five children and attends Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church.

Dr. Wilfred McClay
Hillsdale College

Wilfred M. McClay is Professor of History at Hillsdale College. His book The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America received the 1995 Merle Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American intellectual history. Among his other books are The Student’s Guide to U.S. History; Religion Returns to the Public Square: Faith and Policy in America; Figures in the Carpet: Finding the Human Person in the American Past; Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Public Life in Modern America; and Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.

He served for eleven years on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is currently is a member of the U.S. Commission on the Semiquincentennial, which has been charged with planning the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday in 2026. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Academy of Education, and received the Bradley Prize in 2022. He is a graduate of St. John’s College (Annapolis) and received his Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University.

Leslie Moeller
The Geneva School of Boerne

Leslie Moeller has been involved in Classical, Christian education for over 20 years. She has served as the Head of Upper School at the Covenant School in Charlottesville, Virginia; and as teacher, Head of School, and Board Chair at Geneva School of Boerne in Texas. She has also served on the boards of Prince of Peace Christian School in Carrolton, Texas; New Covenant Schools in Lynchburg, Virginia; and the Society for Classical Learning. She currently teaches in the Gordon College Masters in Educational Leadership program; serves on the board of the Veritas School in Richmond, Virginia; and consults with classical, Christian schools around the nation. She will be the Head of School at Geneva School of Boerne beginning in June, 2024. She received her J.D. from Boston College and her B.A. in English Literature and Economics from the University of Virginia and she and her husband, Eric, have three adult children, all of whom have attended classical, Christian schools.

Robert Mosolgo
Lake Road Farm

Robert Mosolgo is a web software developer and hobby farmer. He has developed software at Planning Center and GitHub and is currently self-employed. On the farm, he specializes in grass-fed dairying and cheesemaking, along with timber framing, raising Icelandic chickens and all kinds of fermenting. He lives near Charlottesville, Virginia with his wife and four daughters and is a member of Trinity Presbyterian Church.

Ken Myers
Mars Hill Audio Journal

In 1972, Ken Myers recorded his first interview about theology and culture. His guest was Johnny Cash, and — since Cash had recently written a song about the Last Supper — they talked for a while about the Incarnation and the Eucharist. A few years later, having finished a degree in film theory and criticism, Myers landed a job at National Public Radio, editing interviews and commentary about the arts, and later serving as the arts and culture editor for Morning Edition.

He left NPR in 1983, and edited a monthly magazine and then a quarterly journal which explored issues in theology and culture. Since 1993, Myers has served as host and editor for Mars Hill Audio, a unique production company which distributes an audio magazine, audio books, and extended conversations with scholars and other authors. He regularly interviews poets, novelists, historians, philosophers, composers, theologians, and other scholars and thinkers — all with the goal of encouraging a deeper understanding of the ramifications of the Christian faith for cultural life, and the consequences of the patterns of modern culture for Christian faithfulness.

A graduate of the University of Maryland and of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Mr. Myers is the author of All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture and has served on several evaluation panels for the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to his work for Mars Hill Audio, he is music director at All Saints Anglican Church in Charlottesville, VA, writes a regular column on sacred choral music in Touchstone magazine called “From Heavenly Harmony,” and lectures frequently at colleges, universities, seminaries, and churches around the country.

Dr. Kyle Williams
The Hedgehog Review

Kyle Edward Williams is senior editor of The Hedgehog Review and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He earned a BA in History and Classical Languages from the University of Oklahoma and a PhD in American History and modern social thought from Rutgers University. He serves on the Board of Mars Hill Audio and on the Vestry at All Saints Anglican Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. His work has been published or featured in numerous publications, including the Washington Post, The New Republic, Boston Review, The Nation, Vox, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation (W.W. Norton & Co.).