Sean Kelsey, '92
Professor of Philosophy
Alumni Profile -- (Fall 1998 Newsletter)
 Socrates
had the streets of Athens to discourse on philosophy. Sean
Kelsey, ('92), has the campus of the University of California
at Los Angeles (UCLA).
Kelsey has had an astonishing rise since his graduation from
the College slightly more than six years ago. His outstanding
academic record and performance on the Graduate Record Exam
got him admitted to one of the most prestigious graduate programs
in the nation, Princeton University, where his area of specialization
was in Ancient Philosophy.
While at Princeton, Kelsey compile a record of outstanding
achievement. He was a Graduate Fellow with the National Science
Foundation from 1992 to 1995 and obtained a Princeton University
Graduate Fellowship from 1995 to 1997. These awards were presaged
by winning a Younger Scholar Summer Fellowship from the National
Endowment for the Humanities in 1991, the summer before he
graduated from the College. He is fluent in Greek, Latin,
and French, too.
He obtained his doctorate in philosophy from Princeton in
1997, and wrote his dissertation on "Causation in Plato
and Aristotle." His thesis advisor, Dr. John Cooper,
called it "an outstanding, profound, and original discussion
of important and difficult texts" and predicted that
it would be "a truly significant improvement in our understanding"
of ancient philosophy.
"TAC greatly helped me at Princeton," Kelsey said. "For one,
it helped me think things through as I never had. I had never
really raised interesting questions, and it was an intellectual
awakening for me. Second, it taught me how to read texts critically
and clearly and figure out what the author was saying. This
sort of analytical thinking was particularly helpful to me."
Dr. Cooper echoed the same: "I have had few graduate
students as able as Sean to identify what they had to learn
and then learn it efficiently and well. In Sean, Thomas Aquinas
College has produced a remarkable young scholar and teacher
as well as a fine human being."
Upon graduating from Princeton, Kelsey was hired for a tenure-track
position teaching in the Program of Classical Studies at Iowa
State University. While there, he was one of five chosen from
a field of 40 to participate in a symposium at the Pacific
Division of the American Philosophical Association -- an accomplishment
of distinction for a newly-degreed Ph.D. He drew the praise
of his mentor, Dr. Joseph Kupfer, who calls him "a thoughtful,
incisive thinker" who "showed students what wrestling
with a difficult text was all about."
While at Iowa State, Kelsey applied for another tenure-track
position at UCLA, which boasts one of the top ten philosophy
departments in the country. UCLA had been looking to fill
the position with the right candidate for two years. Kelsey
was it. He joined 10 other full-time faculty members in the
department.
Currently, he teaches the Beginnings of Western Philosophy
(covering the pre-Socratics and some of Plato), as 160 students
fill his lecture hall twice a week. He"ll soon be teaching
an upper division and a graduate course on Plato, as well
as an upper division course on the philosophy of religion.
"The students are eager, and I have very positive relationships
with the other faculty members," he says. "I"m very happy
and lucky to be here."
Kelsey is thankful for the help he gets from his wife, Christel
(nee Krause), who graduated from the College the year before
him. Together they raise three young children, as Christel
homeschools the oldest two. They were particularly happy to
land at UCLA and be near Christel's family who lives an hour
drive away.
While Socrates lectured the streets of Athens 400 years before
Christ, thanks to Kelsey, Socrates also makes the lecture
halls of UCLA. Kelsey thus lives a philosopher's dream.
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