The Valor Institute
The Valor Institute is a creative response to the unique challenges of our time: reductive ideologies, mechanized views of the natural world, and communities fractured through impoverished public discourse. At stake is the meaning of human life in community. Responding to these trends that flatten our culture, the Institute seeks to deepen our engagement with reality by cultivating wisdom, gratitude, and friendship.
Our Programs
Great ideas are humanity’s way forward. At Valor we recognize that ideas live in persons and reflect our experience, even as they shape it. The Institute brings together people who wish to enlarge their experience through shared conversation, reading, and recreational encounter with the natural world. Our Austin center offers a variety of programs involving teachers, undergraduates, graduate students, professors, artists, scientists, and professionals. Please take a look at our schedule of upcoming events. We look forward to meeting you!
Academic Retreats
Join us for one of our three-day academic retreats throughout the year. Each retreat is led by an Institute Fellow and focuses on great thinkers and interdisciplinary themes. These programs combine world-class outings with a personal and engaging academic experience. Participants will study and discuss the humanities, arts, and sciences, kayak, hike , and enjoy intentional meals and social time to build friendship and community.
Seminar Discussions
Institute seminar discussions connect professors, teachers, school leaders, college students, graduate students, and professionals on a regular basis. The conversations are an opportunity to grow as an intellectual community in the wisdom we have inherited. Past sequences have focused on Shakespeare’s Sonnets, for example, and in the near future we will examine philosophical texts on what it means to be human.
College Student Retreats
Open to collegiate juniors and seniors, the College Student Retreats offer students an extended version of our signature Academic Retreats. Each retreat brings together students and professors from across the country to grow in wisdom, engage deeply with the natural world, and build lasting friendships.
Kingfisher Fellows Program
The Institute’s Kingfisher Fellows is a distinct group of professors and influential thinkers who lead retreats and give lectures to faculty in Valor’s K-12 classical schools and the broader community in Austin, Texas.
“Philosophy springs from the love of being;
it is man's loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune himself to it.”
– Eric Voegelin
The Institute’s Role in Shaping School Culture
What does it take for an organization to remain faithful to its vision? At Valor, we believe that meaningful time spent in an ever-deepening exploration of our vision and intellectual inheritance is the key to this fidelity. This is the best way to build and sustain a flourishing community. The Valor Institute forms Valor board members, executives, school leaders, teachers, and students to achieve this mission through carefully designed retreats, programs, and other endeavors.
School Leaders Formation
As an organization, Valor is deeply committed to developing its school leaders. While our school model gives our schools a guiding light, school leaders are ultimately responsible for the instantiation of Valor’s vision in each particular campus. As such, each school leader must develop a deep understanding of the theoretical and practical wisdom necessary to guide a Valor school. The Valor School Leaders program emphasizes both while shaping and forming school leaders from within Valor through intensive intellectual formation, personal and professional growth, and friendship with one another through a sequence of readings, discussions, presentations, and retreats in Austin and San Diego.
Faculty Formation
Faculty members at Valor have the opportunity to participate in the Valor Institute’s Faculty Fellows program through intellectual formation, personal and professional growth, and friendship with one another through a sequence of readings, discussions, lectures, social events, and retreats.
The program is unique in its holistic approach. Rather than focus on one particular aspect of our life at Valor (the intellectual, the professional, or the social), the Faculty Fellows Program incorporates each into an integrated whole. This program aims to enliven and deepen Valor’s vision within each faculty fellow in order to form a core group committed to wisdom and virtue.
Student Formation
The Valor Institute works with Valor schools to invite students in a deeply human education that values wisdom, virtue, friendship, and a humane engagement with one another and the natural world. The Human Encounter program, for example, gives our students the opportunity to authentically engage with life in its manifold forms, from visiting a sustainable farm to working closely with local organizations who seek to remedy homelessness. In each case, the Institute offers to fully engage each student in what is true, good, and beautiful.