Zachary M. Zito

Founder & Program Director

 

Altum was founded on a simple conviction: intellectually serious students deserve preparation that matches their ambition. The Altum program offers a targeted education in reasoning, clarity, and thoughtful engagement with demanding ideas. It is designed to mirror the structure and standards of a university honors seminar. Students work in small cohorts, engage directly with primary texts, and are trained (and then expected) to read, speak, and write with precision. The goal is to practice the habits required for sustained intellectual work at the collegiate and professional level.

 

I bring to this work over five years of teaching experience at both the high school and university level, working with students across a wide range of academic preparation. My academic background is in mathematics, physics, and philosophy; I graduated summa cum laude with degrees in all three disciplines. During my studies, my scholarly interests included logic, ethics, classics, and the structure of formal systems. These fields shape how I teach: carefully, analytically, and with deep respect for both tradition and complexity.

 

I personally lead all live Socratic seminars, supervise every major writing project, and author each student’s letter of recommendation for college admissions. This level of involvement is central to the program’s design and ensures that every evaluation reflects a genuine understanding of the student’s intellectual character. Students are expected to articulate ideas clearly and revise their work through multiple drafts as they learn to synthesize material and to sustain serious thought over extended arguments. Students who thrive at Altum leave not only with a polished writing sample and formal credential, but with the confidence that comes from having already succeeded in a university-level honors environment.