August 5, 2010

ARETE NAMES DEREK MONJURE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Arete Scholars Fund is pleased to announce the appointment of Derek Monjure to the position of Executive Director.  Mr. Monjure has spent the majority of his adult life involved in various ways within the field of education.

A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, Monjure graduated from the University of New Orleans with a degree in political science before moving to Alabama in 1991 to pursue a masters degree in education at Jacksonville State University.  Soon after graduating, he taught and coached at Miller Grove Junior High in Decatur, GA.  While there, Mr. Monjure taught civics and history and was awarded a teacher of the year designation.

Mr. Monjure left education professionally and assumed a management position with AT&T in 1999.  Within two years, he accepted a management position with the then newly formed Lucent Technologies.  Monjure quickly rose to General Manager overseeing a large team heading operations and customer service for accounts totaling nearly $1B annually.  Monjure resigned his most recent position with Presidio Networked Solutions to take on the new challenges of Arete Scholars Fund.

Even during his years in business, education was never far from his mind.  During this time, Monjure began to research alternatives to existing educational models for his own children.  This led him to the vibrant recovery movement in classical education and to pursue launching a new school.  After several years of contemplation and intense planning, Dominion Classical Christian Academy (DCCA) was founded in Lawrenceville, GA in 2006.  DCCA is now entering its fifth year and has become a fixture in its local community.  Monjure continues to serve DCCA as vice chairman and is permanent member of its board of directors.

Derek lives in Dacula, GA with his wife Christy and their five children, Ethan, Abigail, Bridgid, Katie and Nate.

Arete Scholars Fund is a non-profit Student Scholarship Organization that was created to help alleviate the enormous educational challenges faced by children in Georgia who live near poverty.  The program provides K4-12 Tax Credit Scholarships to students from low-income families. These scholarships allow the students to consider a private school that may better suit their individual needs, an option which is already available to families of greater financial means. This choice is not based on whether the public school is judged as succeeding or failing. Rather, it recognizes that different children learn in different ways and that our collective struggle is to help the students who often are at the greatest disadvantage in modern education.