This course is designed to acquaint the student with basic functions and capabilities of Microsoft Excel. The goal of the course is to enable students to learn how to automate data enabling them to use the automated outputs of an Excel spreadsheet to better real day-to-day needs in their own life. Each student will be assigned a project of their own choosing that will use MS Excel to simplify and automate something in their life that is currently being done manually or not being done at all.

We'll examine today's Europe, identify its strengths and challenges, and then delve into the historical hows and whys, starting with events as early as 1900 and the First World War. Learn how Europe's history influences the continent today. We will also discuss what the future holds for a region that, for the past millennium, has outperformed its proportion of the world.

Fred Caitlin has taught history for over forty years at high school and college levels. He has degrees in history from UVa and Penn. He most recently taught a popular course on the background of the current Ukraine-Russia war.

The Middle East is, once again, in the midst of a variety of political and armed crises. Besides the Israeli-Hamas war, other recent events, including the killing of a senior Hamas official in Beirut, stepped-up attacks by Houthis on ships in the Red Sea, Islamic State bombings in Iran, and the killing of an Iranian-backed militia leader in Iraq, all highlight mounting tensions across the region. Together, these developments paint a stark picture of a region on the verge of a wider war.

This class aims to delve into several 2024 conflicts in the Middle East, including each conflict’s history, current status, and outlook for resolution. A sample of the conflicts to be covered in the class include Israel-Hamas, Israel-Hezbollah, Iran and Iranian proxies-United States, the Houthi Red Sea ship attacks, the Sudan civil war, and the Algeria-Morocco conflict.

The format of each class is casual and will include extensive use of graphics and maps to illustrate each conflict and plenty of time to ask questions and discuss. Each class will be from 60 to 90 minutes in length.

Tim Nolan has taught classes at RappCE since 2016, mainly in the Middle East. He has studied the Middle East and specific ME countries for over 30 years, 17 of which were spent living in Saudi Arabia, where he provided political and economic analysis to the Saudi government. His last assignment was with the CIA, where he provided intelligence from several Middle East countries. He has a BA and MA in economics from California State University.

When White Supremacists ‘rallied’ in Charlottesville in 2017 in opposition to the removal of a statue, they exposed an enduring raw nerve in the consciousness of the country, a sore further exacerbated by the 2020 murder of George Floyd and other earlier related, heinous acts. Since these events, the causes, meanings, enduring consequences, and modern reckonings of and about the Civil War have (once again) become subjects of furious debate; all of this ignited into a raging conflagration by an inanimate metal effigy of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The offending statue was not only removed but, in a further symbolic move, was melted down into oblivion. Likewise, all memory of Lee seems destined for erasure in many quarters.

Lee is the iconic figure of the Confederacy, the one person most identified with the Southern Cause in the Civil War. Now, it is the subject of unceasing denigration in nearly all public conversation. But who was Lee exactly? In all the frustrations and fury surrounding past and present injustices, where does this ‘marble man’ as some historians have deemed him fit in our ongoing history.? How does his life, his character, and the choices he made compare with those of ourselves, our leaders, other public figures, indeed, with all of humanity? How do we and others handle significant challenges to our fundamental values that we sometimes face? Will eradication of the man lead to reconciliation or a better understanding of our troubled past?

With this question in mind, the class will attempt to cover all aspects of Lee’s life, both positive and negative, in the context of the past, the present, and the future. The hope will be to show that specific lessons of his life, however flawed that life may appear, provide memorable examples of timeless values.

Dr. John Tole is an engineer, historian, musician, and tree farmer connected to Rappahannock County and has resided here for over 40 years. He is a native of Washington, D.C., with Civil War roots in New York and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia: one great-great-grandfather was a Union naval officer; another was a member of the Stonewall Brigade in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. He studied, taught, and conducted research in engineering at M.I.T & spent many years in technical endeavors.

John is president of the Rappahannock Historical Society (where his wife, Judy, is the Executive Director). He has co-authored several books on local history, including the forthcoming Sperryville Bi-Centennial History, lectured on various Civil War topics, and is the program manager for the County’s Civil War Trails project that erected 33 local roadside markers about Rappahannock’s role in the War. He is also a musician whose repertoire includes American period music from colonial days to the present, including a large body of Civil War-era tunes.

Hail Caesar, home from the wars…what darker fate awaits him? Suspicion, conspiracy, and power lust boil up in a rush to murder in Shakespeare’s gripping political drama. As friendships are sundered and loyalties tested, guilt pursues the killers to their dark ends. “O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason…”

In four classroom sessions, learn about the play and discuss its characters and themes. See how your views as adults about this famous drama may differ from those you held as high school or college students. Then, travel in a passenger van or carpool to the Blackfriars Theater in Staunton, VA, and view the play enacted by the American Shakespeare Center.

Note: Four classroom sessions will meet at RappCE at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, April 30, May 7,14, and 21. Participants will ride in carpools or a passenger van to Staunton, VA, on Sunday, June 2, for a 2 p.m. performance. Enrollees may purchase tickets to the June 2 performance at the first class for $50-$60. Copies of the play will be ordered and purchased before the first class as needed.

Kathleen Grove has been an educator for 50+ years, teaching English at the middle and high school levels, directing curriculum and instruction as Assistant Superintendent in ArlingtonPublic Schools, serving as Head of School at Wakefield Country Day School, and serving as interim Superintendent for Rappahannock County Public Schools.