It is with great pleasure that I announce the winner of the David D. and Rosemary H.
Coffin Fellowship for Travel in Classical Lands. From a strong field of applicants and
the largest to date, Mr. Thomas Cox of Alexandria, VA emerged as an innovative,
engaging, and inspiring teacher of the languages and material cultures of classical
antiquity.
A graduate of Hillsdale College with a B.A. in Classical Studies, Mr. Cox since 2009 has
been a faculty member of the Heights School in Potomac, MD, where he teaches Greek,
Latin, and English to students in the upper and middle schools.
Describing Mr. Cox’s teaching of Greek, particularly his use of conversation in the
ancient language and his sense of humor, a student remarks that Mr. Cox made “this
complicated subject far more interesting and fun than it might otherwise be.” The student
also comments that Mr. Cox clearly “cares about the people he teaches” and that his
“love of learning was a great help and important example to me and all of his students.”
A school administrator states that Mr. Cox is “a teacher who knows how to captivate the
interest of his students while getting them to work very hard. His style of teaching makes
the students love his classes and engage the material, really wanting to learn.” A fellow
teacher at the school praises Mr. Cox’s “enduring intellectual curiosity” and “constant
zeal for the material.”
Mr. Cox will travel to Rome to attend the Pontifical University of Santa Croce, where he
will be immersed in fluent language acquisition of both Latin and Greek, an innovative
technique for learning and teaching ancient languages that he plans to implement further
in his own pedagogy. In addition, he will tour classical sites in and around Rome to
create visual aids for his Latin courses. Many of these aids will consist of photographs of
monuments and sites featured in a Latin textbook used at the Heights School.
I would like to thank my colleagues on the committee, Dr. Nigel Nicholson and Dr.
David J. Murphy, for their deliberation, and Adam Blistein for his help with the process.
Bronwen Wickkiser
Chair