Richard J. Bishirjian, Ph.D. is a businessman and conservative educator.  He earned a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh (1964), and a Ph.D. in Government and International Studies from the University of Notre Dame (1972) under the direction of Gerhart Niemyer.   He did advanced study with Michael Oakeshott at the London School of Economics (1968/69) and studied Sanskrit at the Southern Asia Institute, Columbia University (1978).  Dr. Bishirjian taught at universities and colleges in Indiana, Texas and New York from 1968 to 1981.   He is the author of a history of political theory and editor of A Public Philosophy Reader that was cited by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute as one of the best studies of conservatism. Dr. Bishirjian is the author of more than thirty-one professional essays and reviews. Appointed to the Office of the President-Elect in 1980, he served as a Team Leader with responsibility for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was appointed by President Reagan as Acting Associate Director of the United States International Communication Agency, now USIA. He served on the staff of the United States Senate.  He was president and founder of World News Institute, and Associate Director of Boston University, College of Communication. Beginning with the fall of the Berlin wall, he worked in Eastern and Central Europe as a privatization consultant and/or partner with major corporations.  In 1996 he served as privatization consultant to the County of Allegheny, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.   His previous experience in distance learning includes management of Boston University College of Communication's continuing education seminars to government and business executives in the Washington, DC area.   In 1999 he launched American Academy of Privatization, (http://www.mrprivat.com), an Internet-based distance learning program of lectures on privatization topics that is offered free of charge to public executives in state and municipal governments.  Dr. Bishirjian has been a member of the Philadelphia Society since 1975 and serves as an Editorial Advisor to the quarterly journal founded by Russell Kirk, Modern Age.

Dr. Sheryl J. Brown Dr. Sheryl J. Brown earned the B.A. from the University of California in 1970, after having spent two years at the American University in Paris.  Her degree from U.C. was in English literature. Her next degree was from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in the Masters in Liberal Arts (MLA).  She then received a Masters in Arts in Literature at University of Dallas, TX. She was awarded a scholarship/fellowship at the University of Dallas in the Institute of Philosophic Studies, where she pursued a double doctorate in Political Philosophy and Western Literature in the Wilmore Kendall Program. She received the doctorates in 1985.  Her Dissertation,  “Introduction to Montesquieu:  A First Reading of Essay on Causes That Can Affect the Spirits and Characters,” with translation and commentary, was supervised by professors Melvin Bradford, Glen Thurow, and Thomas West.

From 2002 to 2006, Brown was Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). From 1995 to 2002 she was director of Communications, the Virtual Diplomacy, Fellowship and Library programs at USIP (four separate departments, which she managed simultaneously).

She organized several international conferences and founded and edited USIP’s, Virtual Diplomacy Publication Series (VDS), no. 1-18, 2000-2005.

From 1991-2005, she was an instructor at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, in the continuing education program. She taught ancient Greek history, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon.

Brown also served as a consultant to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), developing, writing and editing the 25th-Anniversary ARC Achievement Project: a retrospective of accomplishment in the Region. That included a textbook/guide targeting 5th-8th grade Appalachian youths for class-initiated community development projects.

She also was a member of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Advisory Board for the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) from 1984-1987.

She is the mother of two sons, Darcy and Austen and was a triathlete (Olympic) for four years from 2001-2005.

Dr. Brown’s publications include:

• “Arab Media: Tools of the Government, Tools for the People?” Virtual Diplomacy Series, U. S. Institute of Peace (Vol. 18) 2005.
• Creating a Common Communications Culture: Interoperability in Crisis Management, co-authored with Richard Solomon, USIP Virtual Diplomacy Series, 2004.
• “Virtual Diplomacy: Rethinking Foreign Policy Practice in the Information Age,” Information & Security, co-authored with Margarita Studemeister (Vol. 7, 2001).
• “The Diffusion of Diplomacy,” The Magazine on Information Impacts, co-authored with Margarita Studemeister (2001).
• Resolving Third World Conflicts: Challenges for a New Era, co-edited with Kimber Schraub (USIP Press, 1992).
• Making Peace Among Arabs and Israelis: Lessons from Fifty Years of Negotiating Experience, co-authored with Samuel W. Lewis and Kenneth W. Stein (USIP Press, 1991).

Thomas F. Payne, Ph.D., J.D, majored in History at the University of Notre Dame where he was inspired by the classes of Professor Gerhart Niemeyer to become a political theorist.   Dr. Payne holds both a Ph.D in Government from Claremont Graduate School and a J.D. from the Vanderbilt University School of Law.

From 1983 to 1987, he was an Associate Professor of Political Science at Hillsdale College, where he helped build and expand the small department of history and political science into one recognized nationally for academic excellence.

In 1988, Dr. Payne served as a clerk in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio and in 1990 became a clerk for the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.  He joined the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore in 1991 as a Litigation Associate.  Cravath is one of the nation's premier business firms, with IBM, CBS, and New York's Chemical Bank as clients.   In his role as associate, Dr. Payne participated in cases involving securities regulation, first amendment law, patent infringement, and corporate governance.   Later, with the Philadelphia firm of Felheimer, Eichen & Braverman, he worked on antitrust, lender-liability, and bankruptcy cases.

Since 1995, he has been a sole practitioner of the law, handling a wide range of cases:   commercial leases, corporate governance, probate litigation, and post-decree divorce matters. Several of his cases have been reported in legal publications.   One of the most important is Ouellette v. The Christ Hospital (S.D. Ohio), which establishes that a claim is not preempted by the ERISA Law where the plaintiff alleges that the negligence of an HMO in establishing financial incentives for cost-containment caused malpractice by a physician.

Dr. Payne's interest in government and politics is more than academic.  He has been a campaign worker for city council and congressional candidates, a precinct worker for Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, a regional political director for the Reagan-Bush Committee, and, as a member of the Reagan Transition Team, he helped prepare the final report on multilateral development banking.   Dr. Payne was retained as a consultant to the Office of Cultural and Education Affairs at the United States International Communication Agency (USICA) to research and write a history of cultural diplomacy of the United States.

He has been admitted to practice as a member of the Bar in Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania and is a member of both the Philadelphia Society and the Federalist Society.  He has published articles in political philosophy, arms control theory, and American politics and has been honored with the American Jurisprudence Book Award in Criminal Law and Professional Responsibility.

Chairman of the Department of Managerial Economics

Debbie Evercloud, Ph.D. earned her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia.  She is the founder of Aspenheart Economics and is a faculty member of Yorktown University and at an Internet-based MBA program.  She also serves as a content developer in the economics curriculum for Addison-Wesley and Worth Publishing.

In her Ph.D. work at the University of Virginia, Dr. Evercloud investigated the early effects of American unionization on wage levels.  Her other areas of research include the relationship between tax rates and work effort, and patterns of early twentieth-century commercial development in Chicago.

Dr. Evercloud's experience teaching economics in an online executive MBA curriculum enables her students at Yorktown University to maximize the resources of web-based education and enrich their understanding of classical economic theory and issues and the entrepreneurial history of the United States.

Dr. Evercloud has authored interactive economics tutorials which Addison-Wesley and Worth Publishing incorporate as part of the college curriculum and she also has designed PowerPoint presentations to accompany their standard textbooks.

Through Aspenheart Economics, Dr. Evercloud communicates her message of optimism about the resilience of free market economies and their ability to create an unfolding of opportunities for those who are willing to apply their creativity and talents in response to marketplace incentives.  She serves as a public speaker on community concerns, policy issues, and the economic outlook.

In her free time, Dr. Evercloud writes poetry and raises puppies who will be placed as service dogs through the organization Canine Companions for Independence.