Hello! I'm Greg Sadler, the designer and instructor for this 8-week online synchronous class. I'd like to introduce myself and tell you a few things about myself you might find relevant to this class.

I've been teaching college & university-level classes in Philosophy, Humanities, Literature, Religious Studies, and Critical Thinking for more than two decades. I first started designing and teaching online courses back in 2012. And I began designing and teaching classes like this one for lifelong learners back in 2014. So I've put in a number of years doing - and continually improving in - this sort of educational work. At this point, I have taught several thousand students in my classes. It's a profession that I'm passionate about!

I first encountered some of the authors we are studying as a college student, while majoring in Philosophy and Mathematics. I can't say I always "got" what Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus were talking about the first few times reading their texts, but once I got to graduate school - and especially once I started reading texts in Greek and Latin - that changed for me. A few of these other authors are people I encountered after graduate school, as I continued my study of ancient philosophy.

Odds are you already know me from my philosophy-focused YouTube channel. I engage in public-facing philosophy in a number of other ways as well. The Sadler's Lectures podcast has over 1300 short lectures on a variety of thinkers and texts in it. I also co-host the Wisdom for Life radio show. From 2016 to 2022, I served as editor of Stoicism Today, and I remain on the Modern Stoicism steering committee. I also write popularly-focused pieces on Philosophy and other topics in my Substack.

After finishing my Ph.D in Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, I have continued my own educational development. This has included an Erasmus Institute Faculty Fellowship at Notre Dame University (studying models of practical rationality with Alasdair MacIntyre), two Summer Research Residencies at the Institute for Saint Anselm Studies, a Charles Chesnutt Library Fellowship studying information literacy, and a Service Learning Fellowship with the Institute for Community Justice.

I also went through training and certification with the American Philosophical Practitioners Association to become a philosophical counselor, and I have been working with clients and organizations applying resources from philosophy (including from the authors we are studying in this class) for nearly a decade at this point.

My wife and I moved back here to the Greater Milwaukee area from New York in 2015, and are very happy to be living and working here in the downtown. I teach regularly for the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and occasionally for Marquette University.

My public involvement with Stoicism in particular over the last decade has been an important part of philosophical work. I have spoken and provided workshops at a number of the international Stoicon conferences and smaller local Stoicon-X events, and was a co-organizer and MC for Stoicon 2021, 2022, and 2024. I co-founded the Milwaukee Stoic Fellowship back in 2016, and was one of the editors of the books Stoicism Today: Collected Essays volumes 3 and 4.

I look forward to meeting all of you and engaging in some intensive study of the Stoics' views on the cardinal virtues throughout our class!