Network of Illinois Catholic Home Educators

Conference Speakers

Mr. James B. Stenson is a writer and educational consultant based in Boston. He received his Bachelor’s degree in biology from Boston College and his Master’s degree in history from Georgetown University. He is a co-founder of The Heights School in Washington, DC, and a founder and headmaster of Northridge Preparatory School in suburban Chicago. He has had more than twenty years of experience in teaching and school administration.

Using his twenty years of experience with families, he has written numerous pamphlets and has authored several books including: Father, The Family Protector; Lifeline: The Religious Upbringing of Your Children; Anchor: God’s Promises of Hope to Parents; and Compass: A Handbook on Parent Leadership. He is the author of numerous other books and booklets for parents. He has given hundreds of lectures to parents in cities throughout the United States as well as the Philippines, Trinidad, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland and England.

Colleen Billing, BSCD, is a homeschooling mother of five children, ranging in age from 4-15. She has been married to her husband Andrew for 17 years and they reside in Westmont, Illinois. Colleen graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a bachelor of arts in public speaking and a minor in the teaching of English. She has been a retreat master, a guest speaker at homechooling ‘home management’ meetings, and a facilitator for mother/daughter organizing workshops at her home. Colleen’s dream was realized in 2006 when she turned her hobby of helping friends and family get organized into her own business called, “Peaceful Interiors”. Colleen’s dynamic, no-nonsense approach to obtaining peace, both in our hearts and in our homes, has people rescuing flat surfaces all over the state!!! Colleen and her husband Andrew are members of the Franciscan-based community, the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, founded by John Michael Talbot.

Sr. Helena Burns, fsp, is a member of the Daughters of St. Paul, an international congregation founded to communicate God's Word through the media. She is finishing her M.A. in Media Literacy Education, has a B.A. in theology and philosophy from St. John's University, NYC, studied screenwriting at UCLA, and holds a Certificate in Pastoral Youth Ministry. She is the movie reviewer for “The Catholic New World,” Chicago’s Archdiocesan newspaper. Sr. Helena has been giving media workshops to youth and adults all over the U.S. and Canada since the 90’s, and believes that media can be a primary tool for sharing God's love and salvation.

Kevin A. O’Donnell is originally from Chicago. He currently resides in Lockport with his wife, Laura and their children, Benita and David. Kevin has worked professionally in Catholic campus ministry since 1995, currently serving as Director of Campus Ministry for the Diocese of Joliet. In that capacity he works at Elmhurst College, Midwestern University and North Central College as Catholic campus minister organizing retreats, Mass and prayer opportunities, discussion groups and classes including a three-week study trip to Rome for Elmhurst College. Kevin is chair of the National Association of Diocesan Directors of Campus Ministry and committee chair for the Catholic Campus Ministry Association. Kevin and his family attend Sacred Heart Church in Joliet and St. Pat’s in Lemont where he is director of the teen choir.

Mrs. Virginia “Ginny” Seuffert, a native New Yorker and mother of twelve, currently resides in Illinois with her husband. While in New York, Mrs. Seuffert was active in the Pro-Life movement, lecturing debating, and writing a number of published articles. After moving to Illinois, she became a founding member of the Network of Illinois Catholic Home Educators, and presently serves as their secretary. She helped establish the “Round Table” (a Catholic home school leadership discussion group), and became a founder and officer of the Catholic Home School Network of America. She is co-coordinator of the Chicago area Père Marquette Home School and Parent Conference.

Mrs. Seuffert has appeared on EWTN, and has been a guest on Relevant Radio and Ave Maria Radio, among others. She has spoken at numerous Catholic family conferences throughout the U.S. and Canada. She is the author of various articles on home education, particularly stressing the teaching of virtues and discipline. Mrs. Seuffert wrote the chapter on “Home Management” in Dr. Mary Kay Clark’s book, Catholic Home Schooling: A Parent’s Guide. She is the author of Management Essentials for the Catholic Home published spring 2010 by Seton Press.

Mr. Joseph Pearce is a world-recognized biographer of modern Christian literary figures. He is the internationally acclaimed author of 14 books, which include bestsellers such as G.K. Chesterton: Wisdom and Innocence (Ignatius, 1997), Literary Converts (Ignatius, 2000), Tolkien: Man and Myth (Ignatius, 2001), Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile (Baker Books, 2001), and Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc (Ignatius, 2002). Pearce’s books have been published and translated into over eight languages.

Mr. Pearce converted to the Catholic faith in 1989 as a result of “becoming friends” with several 20th-century literary figures he researched who had been Christians and, ultimately, converts to Catholicism—particularly G.K. Chesterton. As a younger man, Pearce was “extremely anti-Catholic” and even had opposed Pope John Paul II’s visits to England. His earlier viewpoint gradually shifted as he learned more about the writings and beliefs of the literary converts he would eventually profile.

As Writer in Residence and professor of literature at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida, since September 2001, Mr. Pearce also serves as Editor of the Saint Austin Review, a trans-Atlantic monthly cultural review. A native of Great Britain, he relocated to the United States in 2001 to serve at Ave Maria University. He is also contributing writer to a number of newspapers and magazines in the United Kingdom, U.S. and Canada.

An accomplished tutor, teacher and speaker, Mr. Pearce has participated and lectured at a wide variety of international and literary events at major colleges and universities in the U.S., Britain, Europe and Canada. He is also a regular guest on national and international television and radio programs, and has served as consultant for film documentaries on J.R.R. Tolkien and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Rev. C. Frank Phillips, C.R., completed studies in Music Education from St. Louis University. He studied music theory and composition with Dr. Robert Neidlinger, music history with Rev. Francis Guenter, S.J. and organ with Dr. Marie Kraemer. As a seminarian, Phillips had the privilege to work with Monsignor Martin B. Hellriegel, P.A., who was a noted liturgical giant of his time.

He received a Master’s of Divinity from St. Louis University and was ordained January 1977 as member of the Congregation of the Resurrection. He taught Music history, theory, choir and religious education at Weber High School for 11 years until stationed at St. John Cantius parish in 1988. In 1998, Phillips founded the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius as a Roman Catholic religious community of men dedicated to a restoration of the sacred in the context of parish ministry. Its mission is to help Catholics rediscover a profound sense of the sacred through solemn liturgies, devotions, sacred art, sacred music, as well as instruction in Church heritage, catechetics, and Catholic culture. This mission is reflected in the community\’s motto: Instaurare Sacra (Restoration of the Sacred).

Bishop J.Peter Sartain was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Memphis on July 15, 1978. He was appointed as Bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock in 2000, and in 2006, he was named Bishop of Joliet.

Bishop Sartain attended St. Meinrad College in Indiana, studied at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome, and earned a licentiate of sacred theology from the Pontifical Athenaeum San Anselmo in Rome in 1979.

In addition to his pastoral experience as a parochial vicar and as a pastor, Bishop Sartain has served as Director of Vocations, Chancellor, Moderator of the Curia, Vicar for Clergy, and Vicar General. He has also been a chaplain, academic dean for the permanent diaconate formation program, and a member of the Advisory Council for the Institute for Priestly Formation

Br. Chad McCoy was born and raised in Southern California, is a graduate of Magdalen College, and has been a religious brother with the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius since 2001.

Mrs. Laura M. Berquist, a home schooling mother of six, is founder and director of Mother of Divine Grace School, a home study program currently serving 3800 students. Mrs. Berquist is the author of Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum and editor of The Harp and Laurel Wreath: Poetry and Dictation for the Classical Curriculum. Based on the philosophy of the classical Trivium—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—she has developed a modern classical home school curriculum for grades K-12 that strengthens character and intellect, and reinforces virtue.

Mrs. Berquist is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA. She home schooled her six children for the 23 years. Five of them have graduated from college (of whom three are married); the youngest is a senior in college

Fr. Dwight Campbell, S.T.D., is a Chicago native who attended Loyola University for both his undergraduate and law degrees (B.A. ’79, J.D. ‘82). After working for four years in downstate Illinois as an assistant state’s attorney, he entered Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Peoria in 1991. After serving in various parishes for a number of years and teaching in high schools, he was released to pursue studies in Mariology, and in 2009 he earned a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the International Marian Research Institute, located at the Univ. of Dayton, Ohio. His dissertation topic was The Historical Development and Theological Foundations of Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Relation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Since mid-2007 he and Fr. Ben Reese, S.T.D. (Cand.), have been working as associate pastors at St. John Vianney Church in Northlake, Il., where they have founded, with the permission of Francis Cardinal George, a new society for diocesan priests, The Apostles of Jesus Christ, Priest and Victim, and are at present, along with parish duties, engaged in recruiting members.

Christopher Check, Executive Vice President of the Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois holds a degree in English Literature from Rice University. He served for seven years as a field artillery officer in the Marine Corps in deployments and expeditions in the far east and in the Persian Gulf. He is well traveled in Italy and Greece and has visited the Gulf of Patras. His lecture concludes with a recitation from memory of Lepanto. He sees Chesterton’s celebration of this signal moment in history as “a needed reminder that Europe without Christ is emptied of meaning, and that Islam is an age-old enemy of the West. As the political and religious conflicts of 16th-Century Europe were imperiling civil harmony and national security, the Turk was threatening to devour Christendom. It took the daring leadership of one man, the deep faith of a great pope, and the intervention of the Blessed Virgin to save her.” A father of four boys, Check lectures on topics in military and Church history.

Kevin Vost, Psy.D. is the author of Memorize the Faith! (And Most Anything Else): Using the Methods of the Great Catholic Medieval Memory Masters (Sophia Institute Press, July, 2006), Fit for Eternal Life: A Catholic Approach to Working Out, Eating Right, and Building the Virtues of Fitness Within Your Soul (Sophia, December, 2007), Unearthing Your Ten Talents: A Thomistic Approach to Spiritual Growth (Sophia, 2010), and From Atheism to Catholicism: How Scientists and Philosophers Led Me to Truth (Our Sunday Visitor, 2010). An advocate of the “sound mind in a healthy body” credo so dear to the classical pagan philosophers, Dr. Vost, psychologist and physical fitness expert, seeks to share with Catholic audiences how we can heed Christ’s call to “be perfect” in mind, body, and soul. Dr. Vost has taught psychology and gerontology at Lincoln Land Community College, Mac Murray College, and the University of Illinois at Springfield. He has served as a Research Review Committee Member for American Mensa, the High IQ society. He is a regular guest on multiple Catholic radio and television programs. Memorize the Faith! has been used by teachers of adult religious education classes, by homeschoolers, and in Catholic schoolrooms throughout the country. Dr. Vost resides with his lovely wife and strapping sons in Springfield, Illinois.

Mary Ellen Swee successfully home schooled her four children through the 12^th grade. Her two oldest sons are recent graduates of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, and her daughter received a Bachelor’s degree from Lake Forest College. Currently, her youngest son is a junior at Northwestern, where he is majoring in history and economics. In addition to teaching her own children, Mrs. Swee has conducted numerous classes and private tutorials for other home schooled students in the areas of grammar, composition and literature. A graduate of Carleton College and The University of Chicago, Mrs. Swee will attend law school this fall. Her family belongs to St. John Cantius Parish in Chicago.