2006 Beinecke Scholar, Matthew Loar, returned to the program in 2022 as its Program Director—bringing his experience full circle from scholar to steward. Now leading the program he once benefited from, he is helping to restore its core traditions, including in-person campus visits, deep advising, and strong advocacy for scholars navigating graduate school funding. His trajectory reflects the lasting impact of the Beinecke Scholarship and the unique perspective former scholars bring to shaping its future.
Matthew Loar, 2006 Beinecke Scholar, never set out to pursue Classics as a field of study. One might argue that he studiously avoided it, and when he arrived as a freshman at Washington and Lee University (W&L) in 2003, he had no plans, in his words, to study Latin ever again. Raised in Colorado, Matthew attended public schools except for middle school when he attended the Ricks (stet) Center for Gifted Children on the University of Denver campus. Matthew started learning Latin during these formative years from his teacher, Kris Tracy. “I remember her well, 4’10” with waist-length hair. We played games, she played the guitar, and we all learned Latin!” he recollected. The high school he attended also offered Latin, so he continued studying the language. He attended state and national conventions through the Junior Classical League (JCL), eventually serving as president of the Colorado JCL. But by the time he was a high school senior, he felt he was done. Ready to move on—or so he thought. Enter his first-year college advisor, Edward Adams.
Edward was a 1985 Beinecke Scholar who studied Classics at Amherst College and earned a Beinecke Scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in Classics at the University of California-Berkeley. After two years in California, he earned an M.A. and moved back East to pursue a Ph.D. at Yale University. With a strong interest in English, he quickly earned another M.A. in English from Yale as well as a doctorate degree in Classics. In Edward’s view, the Beinecke-enabled Classics master’s degree leveraged the financial support he needed from Yale. In 1993, he landed a teaching position at W&L, where his decades of academic research combined his interests in Classics and English.
As Matthew’s advisor, Edward encouraged Matthew to revisit his affinity for Latin and registered him for a Latin course. Matthew took a second course, then went on to take Greek and Russian, ultimately finding himself, as a junior, in Italy at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (known simply as “The Centro” among classicists).
Being in Rome clinched his passion for classics, and it was during this time that he received an email from Edward about something called the “Beinecke Scholarship.” Matthew was introduced to 1996 Beinecke Scholar Rebecca Benefiel, a fellow “Centrista” herself, who had just been hired as an Assistant Professor of Classics at W&L. She had majored in Classics as an undergrad at UNC-Chapel Hill and then earned her Ph.D. from Harvard, including research at the prestigious Sapienza University of Rome (“La Sapienza”).
When Matthew returned from Rome, he worked closely with Rebecca on his Beinecke package and was named a Beinecke Scholar in 2006. Matthew considered pursuing graduate study in classics right away, but chose instead to become a high school math teacher for a time. Perhaps because his family was more STEM than humanities-focused, Classics felt like an avocation rather than a career. His grandfather had been a geologist, his father was a physician, and his mother trained as a nurse. One brother had become an emergency room doctor, and another a physical therapist.
The concept of graduate and post-graduate study in the humanities was unfamiliar, even foreign to Matthew.
And yet, the pull toward the classics remained. His first trip abroad was with his high school Latin teacher; his second, to Italy during college; and his third, an archeological fieldwork experience in Greece, all of which fueled his curiosity. When Matthew entered Oxford University in 2008, he pursued a master’s in Women’s Studies. His dissertation topic centered on the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, and ultimately, Matthew attended Stanford University, where he earned a Ph.D. in Classics. During these years on the West Coast, Matthew joined a project in Herculaneum, Italy, run by Rebecca Benefiel, the W&L Classics professor who had earlier advised Matthew on his Beinecke package. While in Herculaneum, Matthew crossed paths with Pasquale Toscano, an undergrad at W&L who would go on to receive a Beinecke Scholarship in 2016 – the first Beinecke Scholar from W&L since Matthew had received the honor a decade prior. Pasquale also won the Rhodes Scholarship. While a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton, Pasquale mentored other Beinecke applicants and, as of fall 2024, has become an Assistant Professor of English at Vassar. Like Edward Adams, Pasquale found a way to merge his interest in Classics and English, the two fields he studied at Oxford.
Matthew regards the Beinecke Scholarship as a catalyst for opening new worlds of experience for students. It was a Beinecke Scholar who expanded Matthew’s world when he was first at W&L, and another Beinecke Scholar who supported him with his own submission. Now, he has the privilege of mentoring new Beinecke Scholars and helping talented students achieve their dreams.