Prof. Greg Aldrete to address the December 2018 graduating class

Since 1995, Professor Gregory Aldrete has been relating the past to the present at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. A professor of Humanistic Studies and History, Aldrete focuses his studies on the Ancient World and what lessons we can learn from history. In his address, “Three Unlikely Virtues,” Aldrete will discuss virtues and advice for graduates drawn from ancient and medieval history.

Prof. Greg Aldrete
December 2018 Commencement Speaker

Aldrete earned his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University before earning his master’s and Ph.D. in Ancient History from the University of Michigan. As a professor at UW-Green Bay, Aldrete teaches classes ranging from Foundations of Western Culture, to Perspectives on Human Values, to the History of Ancient Rome and War and Civilization. Aldrete has been recognized many times over for his work as an educator, including receiving the University’s Founders Association Awards for both excellence in scholarship and teaching, and the UW System Regents Award for Excellence in Teaching, as well as being named the 2012 Wisconsin Professor of the Year.

Students in his class are used to his interdisciplinary approach that combines history, philology, archaeology, art history, and textual and physical evidence — from bringing artifacts like ancient coins into the classroom to dressing in a linothorax — a multi-layered linen armor.

Aldrete has also been recognized nationally, receiving the American Philological Association Award for Excellence in Teaching of Classics at the College Level in 2009, as well as five National Endowment for the Humanities research fellowships.

In addition to teaching on campus, Aldrete has created several video courses with The Great Courses/The Teaching Company. These courses — lecture surveys focusing on The History of the Ancient World, Decisive Battles in History and History’s Greatest Military Blunders and the Lessons They Teach– bring college-level scholarship to the masses, and allow everyone to learn from history.

Aldrete has also written several books, including: “Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome,” “Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii and Ostia,” “The Long Shadow of Antiquity: What Have the Greeks and Romans Done for Us?” (with Alicia Aldrete), and “The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life in the Ancient World.”

Aldrete’s research into ancient history has also garnered international media attention. Over the past decade, Aldrete and his research have been the subject of documentaries on the Discovery Channel, the Smithsonian Channel, the National Geographic Channel and on television programs in Canada and Europe. His research has also been featured in US News and World Report, the New Yorker magazine, Atlantic magazine, Der Spiegel magazine, Military History magazine and The Chronicle of Higher Education.