Richard J. Bishirjian, Ph.D. is a businessman and 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 forty 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.  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.

Lewis G. Pringle, Ph.D. earned his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Harvard, a Masters in Business from MIT, and a doctorate at MIT with specialization in statistics and operations research. Choosing to go into "business" was unusual for Ph.D. statisticians, but Pringle felt that business offered greater economic and personal satisfaction than the traditional course followed by newly-minted PhDs, so he accepted a position as Associate Director of Research in 1968 at BBDO, a large New York advertising agency.

At BBDO, Dr. Pringle was first given responsibility for quantitative methods and then for all research conducted by the agency, on behalf of clients and otherwise, outside the New York Company. In addition, he became responsible for BBDO’s Marketing Department,  Information Center as well as the training of young account executives within the agency. Then, in 1978, Lew was named Director of Research Services for all of BBDO Worldwide. He was elected Senior Vice President and member of the BBDO Worldwide Board of Directors (1978) and then Executive Vice President (1981). Even as Director, Dr. Pringle was able to participate personally in the improvement of the company’s techniques as well as in the creation of marketing and advertising strategy. BBDO, during this period, devoted substantial resources to research, employed between 100 and 200 professionals in this function and had documented credentials as the very best in research and strategy formulation.

In 1984, after six years as BBDO Worldwide’s Director of Research Services, Lew left that position to work with the Chairman/CEO and COO of BBDO Worldwide, to help them formulate a plan for the global future of the company. The task was a highly practical one; to answer the question "what organizational, structural and professional changes were needed in BBDO Worldwide to permit it to optimally address the rapidly evolving needs of its clients on a global scale?" In April of 1986, Dr. Pringle was named Chairman/CEO of BBDO Europe and, from his base in the U.K., assumed responsibility for BBDO’s interests in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. At the time, the agency’s Capitalized Sales were $550,000,000. During his four years tenure in this position, those sales tripled to over $1,600,000,000, while profit grew at about the same rate. Pringle regarded his biggest challenge in Europe as the integration of BBDO agencies, market by market, into an organization culturally and professionally committed to serving multinational clients in cross-border marketing and advertising efforts. Pringle numbers among his accomplishments that, during the era of glasnost, he brought BBDO to the Soviet Union, where it became a pioneer in the integration of modern Russia with the rest of the developed world.

In 1995, Dr. Pringle accepted a Chaired Professorship at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In that capacity, he taught, several times, the Capstone Course in Marketing Strategy as well as several courses in Market Research. Dr. Pringle also served six years as member of the Visiting Committee of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, as Associate Editor of Marketing Science for 15 years and has published a number of times in that journal as well as in such journals as the Journal of Marketing Research and the Harvard Business Review. He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Advertising as well as a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

Gary T. Barrette, Dean, MBA in Entrepreneurship and Sport Management, was formerly Dean of Academic Affairs, United States Sports Academy, a regionally accredited institution in Daphne, Alabama.  Dr. Barrette served as a member of the Faculty in Sport Education at Adelphi University from 1969-2001.  He earned the Ed.D. degree in 1977 from Teachers College, Columbia University, the M.Ed. degree in 1969 from Pennsylvania State University and the B.A. in 1963 from The College of Wooster.  Dr. Barrette co-authored over fifty publications in books, research journals, professional journals, and international scientific congress proceedings.  In addition, he delivered well over two hundred professional presentations and workshops in teacher education design and sport administration, sport pedagogy and youth sport.

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.

Christopher Evans earned a BA Degree in Economics from California State University Northridge.  While there he also earned Secondary Education Teaching endorsements in Social Studies and Business Education.  During his tenure as a high school Social Studies teacher Chris was asked by the Colorado Department of Education to be a co-contributor and writer of a Secondary Education Curriculum Guide for teaching Economics in Colorado high schools.

Chris has done graduate work in History and Economics at the University of Colorado and the University of Denver.  Before joining Yorktown University, Chris had a successful ten year corporate career as a Facilities Planner and owned and operated three businesses.  Chris spent one year in Washington, DC at the National Journalism Center, founded by M. Stanton Evans, and at Human Events doing research and writing about politics.  As Director of Admissions he is responsible for monitoring student progress, disseminating student and faculty surveys and maintaining Yorktown University’s public relations.