MICROCOLLEGE is an exploration of the crisis in higher education and the innovative projects and thinkers working to address it, with a special focus on the human-scaled, place-based, meaning-oriented learning communities we call "microcolleges."
The podcast is hosted by Jacob Hundt, Founder of Thoreau College, a micro college rooted in the Driftless Region of rural southwestern Wisconsin, inspired by the model of Deep Springs College, Waldorf education, and Henry David Thoreau. This podcast is for thoughtful, motivated teenagers and young adults who are disappointed by the options available to them in post-secondary education, as well as their teachers, parents, counselors, and mentors, and anyone interested in the quality of higher education and its role within our culture.
Listeners will be introduced to new ideas and alternative opportunities for post-secondary education, as well as thoughtful criticism of mainstream models and practices at colleges and universities. Listeners will discover exciting educational programs to apply to, books to read, and thinkers to learn more about.
Learn more about Thoreau College and the microcollege movement at https://thoreaucollege.org/
Gutenberg College - Charley Dewberry ~ Christian Liberal Arts & The Philosophy of Science
Gutenberg College, located in a former sorority house near the campus of the University of Oregon in Eugene, has been in operation as a microcollege for over 30 years. This gives it a unique place in the developing story of the micrcollege movement - either a late comer to the class era of new college creation in the mid-20th century era of higher education experimentation, or an early harbinger of the current flourishing of the 21st century. In either case, the story of Gutenberg College is a fascinating and highly personal one, intimately connected with the biography of my guest for this episode, Charley Dewberry, who has served as a tutor and academic dean since the college's founding in 1994. A native son of the upper Midwest, Charley got interested in science and ecology through an engagement with the complex field of stream restoration and a quixotic quest to restore a fish, the grayling, to its ancestral habitat in northern Michigan. This interest led him to work with salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest and a chance encounter with a book dealing with epistemology and the philosophy of science called Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi, which challenged everything he thought he knew about science and the scientific method and shook his worldview to its core. In fact, Dewberry credits Polanyi's "post critical" attack on reductionist materialist with his personal conversion to Christianity and for setting him on the path to founding a Great Books microcollege dedicated to the "Christian Liberal Arts" with generous helpings of classic ecological thinkers like Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and E.F. Schumacher, all based in a conversation-rich lifesharing community housed under one roof. And they have a popular Irish ceilidh band to boot!
One of the great things about microcolleges is they are impossible to pigeonhole!
Enjoy this conversation with Charlie Dewberry.
Gutenberg College - https://gutenberg.edu/ (https://gutenberg.edu/)
Gutenberg College on "Oregon Grapevine" - KLCC Eugene Public Radio - https://www.klcc.org/podcast/oregon-grapevine/2026-04-07/oregon-grapevine-eugenes-gutenberg-college (https://www.klcc.org/podcast/oregon-grapevine/2026-04-07/oregon-grapevine-eugenes-gutenberg-college)
Thoreau College - https://thoreaucollege.org/ (https://thoreaucollege.org/)
7 Sept 2026
Hildegard College - Matthew J. Smith ~ The Great Books & Education for Entrepreneurs
In this episode, we continue our exploration of the landscape of educational initiatives inspired by the Great Books model of pedagogy with a look at Hildegard College, a young microcollege based in Orange County, California, with founder and President Matthew J. Smith. Named after the 12th century abbess, mystic, and polymath Hildegard of Bingen, Hildegard College combines a ecumenical Christian faith-based approach to the Great Books curriculum with a practical engagement with the world of entrepreneurship, marrying the life of the mind with the love of action in the world in the context of an intimate learning community in a unique way. Founder and president Matthew J. Smith has a degree in Shakespeare studies from USC and recently published an article in ARC magazine called "The Quiet Surge of Alternative Micro-Colleges" that offers a fascinating analysis of microcolleges as a business proposition within the disrupted landscape of higher education, as well well as one of the most comprehensive surveys of participants in this emerging field, including both religious and secular organizations from across the political and cultural spectrum. Matthew and Hildegard College were early adopters of the term "microcollege" (or "micro-college") so it was great to have him on the podcast!
LINKS -
Hildegard College - https://www.hildegard.college/ (https://www.hildegard.college/)
Matthew Smith's Substack - https://matthewjamessmith.substack.com/ (https://matthewjamessmith.substack.com/)
ARC Magazine - The Quiet Surge Of Alternative Micro-Colleges https://arcmag.org/the-quiet-surge-of-alternative-micro-colleges/ (https://arcmag.org/the-quiet-surge-of-alternative-micro-colleges/)
Thoreau College - https://thoreaucollege.org/ (https://thoreaucollege.org/)
31 Aug 2026
Zena Hitz - The Catherine Project & St. John's College
On this episode of the Microcollege podcast, I spoke with Zena Hitz, one of the great contemporary advocates of the Great Books model of education and of the engaged intellectual life. Zena is a Tutor at St. John’s College and founder and president of the Catherine Project. She is the author of two books, Lost In Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life and A Philosopher Looks At The Religious Life. Starting with an immersion in the life of the mind during a Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP) at St. John's college when she was 17, Zena has made a life of participating in and building communities through reading and conversation. In our conversation, Zena tells the story of how the Catherine Project took share during the COVID lockdowns as people all over the country reached out seeking community, connection, and an a place to examine core questions of life and meaning. Since 2020, the Catherine Project has grown from a handful of people discussing literature over Zoom to over 2000 readers meeting up virtually and in person in dozens of tutorials and discussion groups, with more joining every year. This is a phenomenon that challenges the prevailing narrative that reading and engagement with the classics is dead and I really appreciated Zena's passionate articulation of how this model of education is deeply egalitarian and liberating, as well has sharing much in common with the engagement with manual labor and the natural world as practiced at Deep Springs and here at Thoreau College. Zena's vision of human flourishing characterized by community, conversation, and intellectual riches for all is very inspiring!
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
4.6 / 5
9 ratings
Spotify
4.8 / 5
13 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 19 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
8
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
77
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