Faculty & Staff

Each faculty and staff member at Chesterton Academy is a faithful Catholic who has taken an Oath of Fidelity to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Harris Moriarty
Founding Headmaster

Harris Moriarty is a husband and father originally from Northern Virginia. He has experience educating and forming children of all ages in the classroom, on the sports field, and in the wilderness. Additionally, he has masters degrees in Psychology, Liberal Arts, and Business. He believes that education in the transcendentals can be achieved through the discipline of any craft or study through the lenses of the four relationships: God, Creation, Others, and Self. Harris also has a personal devotion to St. Thomas More who exemplified the life of a Christian committed to prudently fulfilling his earthly responsibilities and ardently following his ultimate vocation as a Child of God as encapsulated beautifully in his true last words, "I die the King's good servant and God's first."

Teachers

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    Nick Lapointe - Teacher

    Nicholas Lapointe was raised in Northern New York, where he spent his childhood between the waters of Lake Ontario and the Adirondack Mountains. As a high schooler, he deeply encountered God through studying the rationality of the faith. This summer, Nick is finishing his Master’s in Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he also completed his undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Theology in 2022. Although he has served in various forms of youth ministry throughout college, Nick has a special passion for understanding and sharing the Catholic intellectual tradition especially concerning the beauty and dignity of the human person and the Catholic vision of society, which makes him especially excited to serve as a teacher at the Chesterton Academy of Northern Utah.

  • Maria Zielinska - Art Teacher

    Born in Wadowice, Poland, Maria Zielinska began her life as an artist at the Bielsko-Biala High School of Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland. Having shown her work extensively throughout the United States and abroad, Maria has drawn inspiration from and has focused her work primarily around nature – her latest abstract works are large and colorful expressions of simple happenings she notices in the world around her. By exaggerating such small things in large sizes, she turns what is often times unnoticed or easily looked over into beautiful compositions bursting with color and life. Maria currently works out of her studios in Park City, Utah and Wadowice, Poland.

  • John Payne - Music Teacher

    Utah native, John Payne, grew up in a musical family full of road trips, birthdays, and gatherings filled with song and four-part harmonies. He has been a teacher of music, religion, and choirs at all levels of education and has held music director roles at multiple parishes. He has a deep love and gratefulness for the forms of music which, in service to the Word, reflect the transcendental beauty of God and His Creation bringing us into closer relationship with Him. John holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music from the University of Utah with an emphasis in composition and continues to pursue advanced education in music. He considers himself particularly blessed to be a husband, father, and grandfather.

Staff

  • Julie Wellwerts - Registrar/School Administrator