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Board of Governors Adds to its Ranks

Mark Ryland Elected in October 2006

(Winter 2007 Newsletter)

Mark Ryland is the Founder and President of the Institute for the Study of Nature, a think-tank in Washington, D.C., aimed at the reawakening of natural philosophy in dialogue with natural science. He is also the Chief Technology Officer of Mpower Media, a technology company providing video and Internet media management tools for families. Prior to that, he served as Vice President and Director in the Washington, D.C., office of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think-tank and public policy organization that he had also served as a board member since the mid 1990s. He is a 10-year veteran of Microsoft Corporation where he served in a number of capacities which included his becoming Microsoft’s first Director of Standards Strategy. Before joining Microsoft in 1991, he was an attorney in private practice with the law firm of Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C. He sits on the Boards of Directors of various educational and philanthropic institutions including the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria. Mr. Ryland was elected to the Board of Governors in October of 2006.

Though born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Mark spent most of his childhood in Southern California, where his father taught at the University of San Diego. The family’s journey from the Great Plains to the West Coast was precipitated by a life-altering event in the lives of Mark’s parents: When he was three years old, they entered the Catholic Church. Making this event all the more profound was the fact Mark’s father was a priest in the Episcopal church. Needing to find a way to support the family, his father earned a doctorate in theology from Marquette University and entered a tenure-track teaching position at the University of San Diego. In 1983, some twenty years after entering the Church, Mark’s father was ordained a Catholic priest with a dispensation from the rule of celibacy under the “Pastoral Provision.”

Mark graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in philosophy from the University of San Diego in 1983. He went on to obtain a law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley in 1986, earning membership in the Order of the Coif, a national society for law school graduates. Its purpose is to encourage excellence in legal education by fostering a spirit of careful study, recognizing those who as law students attained a high grade of scholarship.

While at the Discovery Institute, and after founding and directing its Washington, D.C., office, Mark became very interested in countering the prevailing winds of Darwinism and materialism. He gravitated toward the Intelligent Design argument, but found that, like Darwinism, it had its deficiencies. His continual scientific and philosophical inquiry at the Discovery Institute brought him into contact with former Thomas Aquinas College faculty member Benjamin Wiker. “Dr. Wiker was the first person who pointed out to me that the Intelligent Design movement, while vastly better than materialism and reductionism, still has a modern, mechanistic view of nature. Therefore, while it has done a lot of good, it does not offer a sufficiently radical critique of modern scientific reductionism.” Mr. Ryland credits Dr. Wiker with starting him on a long intellectual journey and introducing him to the natural philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Mark’s interest in Thomas Aquinas College deepened significantly when his son Patrick entered the freshman class last year. “Often, when you are experienced with educational institutions,” he recalls, “they look great from a distance, but the more you get involved, the more you see the issues and problems.” Mark’s experience with the College has been different. “I was actually more impressed with Thomas Aquinas College the more I got to know about it and the more I learned from Patrick about his experience as a student.” He finds it a fascinating coincidence that just when he was becoming more convinced that the lack of a proper understanding of nature was the root of many of the problems in our culture, one of his children chose to attend Thomas Aquinas College.

“Thomas Aquinas College, in a very significant way, is a natural philosophy school,” Mr. Ryland explains. “It’s not a liberal arts school. That’s one of the most common misconceptions of the College. Yes, you learn the liberal arts there, but you really learn the sciences in the broad sense, both the natural sciences and the science of philosophy and theology. I think natural philosophy is a very unique aspect of Thomas Aquinas College’s curriculum. There’s no other Catholic college that does anything like that, and that’s why I am so happy to be a part of it.”

Mark, his wife, Katy, and their nine children live in Great Falls, Virginia.

-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2007