LA MIRADA, CALIF. — The Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University is pleased to announce that Dr. Christopher Mitchell will be joining its faculty beginning in the fall of 2013.

Dr. Mitchell is the director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, a study center devoted to researching the lives and works of influential Christian writers, including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others. He is the author of numerous articles on C.S. Lewis, and will be releasing a critical edition of C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man with HarperCollins later this year. He will also be lecturing at Biola on the literary art of J.R.R. Tolkien on March 6.

“The Torrey Honors Institute has always looked to the creative and intellectual legacy of C.S. Lewis as a model,” said Paul Spears, director of the Institute. “To have one of the premier C.S. Lewis scholars in Dr. Mitchell on our faculty will deepen our students’ appreciation for the sort of training that Lewis received.”

As a member of the faculty, Dr. Mitchell will work directly with students in an educational environment modeled on the Socratic approach of Oxford and Cambridge. Students read through a core curriculum of classics and dialogue with each other and professors within small groups. Founded in 1996, the honors program has grown from 16 to some 400 students, making it one of the largest classical books honors programs at any Christian college.

“The Torrey Honors Institute has students who are eager and intelligent and provides a rigorous and well-rounded education,” said Dr. Mitchell. “I am delighted to return to the classroom and to spend time helping students encounter goodness, truth and beauty.”

Dr. Mitchell’s lecture “The Gospel and Fairy-Story: The Literary Art of J.R.R. Tolkien” is free and open to the public. It will be held at 7:30 p.m., March 6, in the Andrews Banquet Room of Talbot East.

Read an interview between Mitchell and professor Fred Sanders at the Scriptorium, the Torrey Honors Institute's blog.

To coordinate interviews or for more information, please contact Jenna Bartlo at (562) 777-4061 or jenna.l.bartlo@biola.edu.

About the Torrey Honors Institute

Serving over 400 students, the Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University is an honors program grounded in the Great Books tradition, oriented toward the collaborative pursuit of truth, and dedicated to providing the most rigorous and holistic general education available to Christian undergraduates. Since 1996, the Institute has been preparing students to pursue excellence and leadership academically, vocationally and communally.