Great Hearts Christian Academies Announces New Executive Director

Great Hearts Christian Academies is pleased to share the appointment Dan Schutten as the new Executive Director of the private arm of the Great Hearts network.

“It is an honor and a joy to be joining Great Hearts Christian Academies,” shared Schutten. Effective July 13, Schutten will oversee the academy’s heads of school, the operations team, and all aspects of organizational health, integrity, and growth.

Great Hearts Christian Academies is accepting applications for the 2026-2027 school year.

Schutten earned a degree in mathematics from the University of Minnesota and moved with his wife to Arizona in 2011 as a founding faculty member at Trivium Prep, a Great Hearts academy in Goodyear. “We came to help start Trivium Prep in the West Valley, thinking we would be here for a year or two at most. We quickly became deeply committed to Great Hearts and, perhaps most strangely, we actually enjoyed the Arizona desert,” he recalled.

Over the past 14 years, Schutten served Great Hearts as a teacher, school leader, and headmaster, gaining a profound understanding of the mission of classical education and the work required to build joyful, intellectually serious school communities. Schutten has also served as the worship pastor at his church for the past twelve years.

Schutten’s life and vocation have been shaped by a deep commitment to faith, truth, and the formation of young minds. He received a private Christian classical education through high school, an experience that instilled in him a lasting appreciation for the great books, challenging study, and the cultivation of virtue.

“I am profoundly excited and energized to be joining Great Hearts Christian Academies as we partner with parents in the formation of their children, teaching them to know and love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and helping them to know and love His creation as well,” he explained. “At Great Hearts Christian Academies, we get to speak to that truth directly, we get to speak about education as formation of body, mind, and soul in order to be the image-bearers we were created to be.”

Schutten said he is committed to lead by listening and loving well first. “My job is primarily to give school leaders and teachers the support and guidance they need in order to do the most important work which happens in the classroom every day.”

As Executive Director, Schutten is excited to bring together his Christian faith and his love for classical education in service of families, students, and faculty. He looks forward to helping lead Great Hearts Christian Academies into the future, advancing a vision of education rooted in Scripture, ordered toward wisdom and virtue, and dedicated to forming students who know and love God and who are curious to know and love His world as well.

Learn more about Great Hearts Christian Academies at https://christos.greatheartsamerica.org.

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Submit a student application to a Great Hearts Academy by visiting: https://www.greatheartsamerica.org/enroll/.