UF Quest
Dr. Andrew Wolpert is the Director of UF Quest and Associate Professor of Classics. He holds a BA in Ancient Greek from Franklin and Marshall College, an MA in Classical Studies from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in the Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World from the University of Chicago. He taught first in the Department of the Classics at Harvard University and then jointly in the Department of Classics and the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin. In 2006, he joined the faculty of the University of Florida.
As a historian of ancient Greece, Wolpert has written extensively on questions concerning the politics, society, and culture of classical Athens, and he has led the way in applying theories from memory studies to research on ancient Greece and Rome. In Remembering Defeat: Civil War and Civic Memory in Ancient Athens, he examines the social and cultural impact of the civil war of 404-403 BCE. In Legal Speeches of Democratic Athens: Sources for Athenian History (co-authored with Konstantinos Kapparis), he provides new annotated translations of a wide range of court speeches that shed light on fourth-century Athens.
Throughout his academic career, Wolpert has been a leader in undergraduate education. Since 2019, he has served as the inaugural Director of UF Quest and has led faculty in the implementation of major changes to UF’s general education program so that students could take general education courses that spark their curiosity and provide them the opportunity to critically examine the many problems that we are facing today. During his directorship, faculty developed more than 200 new UF Quest courses so the UF Quest curriculum could be taught to over 12,000 students per year on a wide range of topics in the arts, humanities, social & behavioral sciences, and the biological and physical sciences.
From 2012-2019, Wolpert was the director of UF’s common course, IDS 1161: What is the Good Life. He promoted the use of digital technologies and experiential learning to teach IDS 1161. He worked with directors and curators at the Harn Museum of Art, the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, and the Constans Theatre to offer performances and exhibits for IDS 1161. He also organized a lecture series that brought to campus internationally-recognized experts in the humanities to speak to students in IDS 1161. Before joining the UF faculty, Wolpert served as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Classics at Harvard University and for Classics and History at the University of Wisconsin, where he implemented an overhaul of the major requirements for the Department of History and developed the First-Year Interest Group Program (FIG) for the Department of Classics.
