Hello! I'm Greg Sadler, the designer and instructor for this online special seminar. 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 didn't come from an academic family, but rather one mostly of people who worked various jobs for a living. In fact, for about a decade people in my family often thought I was studying psychology, because they didn't have any idea what "philosophy" meant! I sort of blundered my way into academic philosophy after I got out of the US Army (during the reduction of force after the cold war ended), and I found at the college I went to, if I wanted to learn a good bit of it, I'd need to do it on my own. I got more useful guidance in graduate school, but again had to study some of the thinkers and works I was interested in outside academia. I've been doing that all of my career afterwards.

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 Medium and in my newer 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 Aristotle) 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.

I look forward to meeting all of you and engaging in some intensive and informative discussion that should help all of you participants going forward in your own continued studies of philosophy.