August 16, 2024 | By Kirstin Fawcett (AGI26)

Genevieve Fowler (AGI25) and Gordon Fowler (AGI26) have always bonded over books. When Genevieve was a teenager away at boarding school, her father “would write me a letter each week,” she recalls, “and often these contained a reflection on a recent read.” Fast forward to 2019, and Genevieve, a Yale alum working in tech, was seeking new intellectual challenges. So when Gordon learned about St. John’s Summer Classics through friend and colleague Warren Spector (A81), he passed the word along to his daughter—and ultimately found himself participating along with Genevieve in not just seasonal seminars but virtual Graduate Institute (GI) courses from their respective homes in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

And yes, they do refer to each other by honorifics (“Mr. Fowler” and “Ms. Fowler”) in classes they have together, as is customary at St. John’s. For a brief period, though, Genevieve was the sole family member in her cohort after kicking off her Great Books journey at Summer Classics in July 2019. Per Spector’s recommendation and an article about the college written a year earlier by New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni, she had been browsing course listings when a week-long Science Institute class on the theory of general relativity caught her eye.

“I did a bit of this in college, but the math went over my head,” Genevieve says. Excited at the prospect of gaining a fuller understanding of the material with tutor emeritus Peter Pesic, she took the leap and registered, arriving in Santa Fe that July: “Between the classes and the mealtime conversation,” she recalls, “I was pretty immediately hooked.”

Genevieve considered continuing these conversations via the Program after returning to her “real life” on the East Coast, but a new job left little bandwidth. Still, she informed Gordon how much she had enjoyed the experience and come January 2021—both housebound due to COVID-19—he joined Genevieve for a Winter Classics Seminar on, fittingly, Albert Camus’ 1947 novel The Plague.

In 2023, Gordon experienced Summer Classics in Santa Fe in person for the very first time with Genevieve when the duo enrolled in a course on Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine led by tutors Grant Franks and Eric Salem. By this point, both had several rounds of Summer and Winter Classics under their belts (Genevieve had completed a combination of in-person and virtual courses; Gordon had stuck with remote offerings). Genevieve had also officially joined the Annapolis GI, taking a low residency course load she found to be “a manageable and extremely fulfilling complement to my job,” she says.

Gordon was readying himself to retire from his own job in finance that summer. But in August 2023, post-Summer Classics, he “realized that I still needed a daily routine that included regular interaction with interesting and inquisitive people.” Like Genevieve, he found his answer in the low-res GI, enrolling and discovering it to be a “perfect way for me to both enjoy being part of my home community and at the same time regularly ‘commute’ to class and engage with a community of intellects with similar interests,” he says.

Genevieve, a self-professed bookworm, has enjoyed reading across a variety of disciplines while in the GI—and, perhaps most importantly, taking the time to truly explore them. “I had a teacher in high school say, ‘This is the last time you’re going to read a book so deeply,’” she recalls one (thankfully incorrect) instructor saying about their rigorous semester-long class on Moby Dick—a prospect that, at the time, had filled her with incredulity. As for Gordon, he enjoys classes on history and politics the most and has tossed around the idea of writing a book on applying the philosophies of Burke and Payne to running a business.

Most of all, Gordon says, he appreciates that St. John’s College has brought him and Genevieve closer together.

“It is a pretty special experience to be able to watch your daughter’s intellect in action,” Gordon says. “In most cases, children follow in their parents’ footsteps. I feel like I am experiencing the joy that comes from following in Genevieve’s footsteps.”

“Sometimes he helps me understand something,” Genevieve concludes, “and sometimes I help him understand something.”