All the members of the Department are committed to, and actively engage in, the wider professional world of classical scholarship and pedagogy in diverse ways. We maintain, for instance, active ties with classical organizations at the local, state, and national levels. In recent years members of the Department have made presentations to the Classical Club of St. Louis, which meets several times annually in an effort to bring teachers, professors, and laity together for discussion of topics of mutual interest. The Missouri Classical Association, which exists to serve the needs and interests of classics teachers from all levels across the state, typically meets once annually at various locations in the state, and members of this Department have long been active in this organization, holding the office of vice-president, giving talks at the autumn gathering, and even hosting the meeting itself on campus. The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, the largest of the regional classical associations in this country, has benefited from the active participation of JBS classicists over the years. We are regular attenders and presenters at the annual CAMWS meeting and have, in addition, served in various capacities in the CAMWS administration, as vice-president at both state and regional levels for the CAMWS standing Committee for the Promotion of Latin.

In 2004 CAMWS celebrated its centenary with a particularly rich meeting held here in St. Louis at the invitation of John Burroughs School; since this was the first time in CAMWS' history that a secondary school, not a university, issued the invitation, it was a signal honor for the School. Thanks to the cooperation of everyone at the school--faculty, staff, administration, and students--school was dismissed early on Friday, April 16, 2004, so that about three hundred classicists from around the country could come to the JBS campus for an afternoon slate of sessions and papers. The highlight was a sumptuous reception followed by a special concert by the St. Louis Chamber Chorus; the highlight of their program, in turn, was a piece special commissioned by the Chamber Chorus and CAMWS--a setting of Horace's Ode 2.3 to music by the acclaimed British composer David Matthews. At the gala CAMWS dinner held later that evening, the members of the JBS Classics Department were much obliged to hear themselves described as the "Dream Team."

The Department has made a special effort to support in every way the Vergilian Society, a learned organization devoted to study and appreciation of that seminal Roman author. The Vergilian Society administers, among other things, the Villa Vergiliana in Cumae, Italy, a haven for student groups investigating the archaeological riches of Campania; we have been privileged to stay at the Villa during each of our student trips to Italy in the past. In recognition of his interest in the Villa, Philip Barnes currently serves on the Board of the Society, and is charged specially with overseeing future developments involving the Villa. Recently Holly Lorencz has taken on the mantle of Secretary-Treasurer of that organization.

The JBS Classics faculty's passion for all things classical extends further still--indeed, well beyond the normal purview of secondary school teachers. Members of this department have undertaken to produce their own textbooks for classes in Greek and Latin; have written articles and book reviews for learned journals; have taken an active role in making suggestions for a second edition of the popular series of Latin texts, the Oxford Latin Course; and have, even, married training in classics with musical expertise. In this last respect Philip Barnes earns special attention, as the artistic director of the aforementioned St. Louis Chamber Chorus, with which group he has recorded several compact discs, most notably Golden Latin Poets, which comprises a capella choral settings of Catullan, Horatian, and Vergilian poetry.