Who We Are And What We Believe

Small School, Big Mission

Our Mission
Inspire each child to find a calling and change the world

Our Vision
​Our learners will become the next generation of servant leaders

Why I Left My Career to Open Masterpiece: An Acton Academy

While serving as a professor, I experimented with Acton methods in my college classroom and witnessed a transformation. One learner described it as a class where he finally stopped caring about grades and just "cared about learning as much as possible." I dreamed of such an environment for my own children.

Do you share that dream? If so, I invite you to take a leap of faith with me and embark on a Hero’s Journey to bring joy back into learning!

Warmly,
Amelia
​
P.S. Things will never be the same. They will be better.

Our Promises

Your child will:

1. Begin a Hero's Journey 
2. Learn to be a curious, independent, lifelong learner
3. Treasure economic, political, and religious freedom
4. Cherish the arts, wonders of the physical world, and the mysteries of life
5. Discover precious gifts and learn to use them to solve difficult problems

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Meet The Founders

Amelia Sofjan, PharmD, BCPS
Co-founder and Director of Masterpiece: An Acton Academy

Amelia is a wife and mother of two young boys. She taught as a professor at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy for ten years while also caring for patients as an Infectious Diseases Clinical Pharmacist at the Texas Medical Center. She is a certified Early Childhood Montessori Instructor. Amelia loves working with learners of all ages and enjoyed serving as an elementary Sunday school teacher for the past seven years. 

Her learners regarded her as an "exceptional, dedicated, and loving teacher." She won the Faculty Preceptor of The Year Award in 2024 for excellence in mentoring pharmacy students and was a Finalist for the University of Houston 2023 Teaching Excellence Award and the Rho Chi Teaching Excellence Award in 2021 and 2022. 

Jue Sea, DDS
Co-founder of Masterpiece: An Acton Academy

Jue is Amelia's loving husband and greatest supporter. He is a graduate of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio School of Dentistry, one of the nation’s top ranked dental schools. He served in a public health center in rural Missouri for two years, providing dental care to underserved children and their families. In 2017, Jue resurrected his childhood dream of becoming a business owner and opened his own dental practice, Dynamic Dental Solutions.

​Jue has an entrepreneurial spirit. He believes in learning by doing and making mistakes, something he hopes his two boys will learn through their journey at Masterpiece: An Acton Academy. He spent two years in Ghana as the son of a Christian missionary and enjoys serving on dental mission trips. 

Jeff Sandefer
Co-founder of Acton Academy

Jeff lives a dual life as an entrepreneur and a Socratic Guide. As an entrepreneur, he founded his first company at age 16 and then found or co-found seven successful businesses. As a Socratic teacher at the University of Texas, Jeff’s students five times voted him the school’s Outstanding Teacher, and Businessweek named him one of the top Entrepreneurship professors in America.

​​Jeff went on to co-found the Acton School of Business, an MBA program perennially ranked by the Princeton Review among the best in the nation. In 2012 The Economist honored him as one of the top 15 Business School professors in the world. 

​​Jeff is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, where he served for over 20 years on the school’s governing committees. He was a longtime director of the Philanthropy Roundtable and National Review magazine and one of the youngest members ever elected to the Texas Business Hall of Fame.

Laura Sandefer
Co-founder of Acton Academy

Laura lived on both US coasts and in between as a child, then settled into Vanderbilt University for her undergraduate studies in the College of Arts and Science. After being awarded the highly competitive Walter Wattles Fellowship at Lloyd’s of London, Laura worked in the aviation insurance industry in New York City.  

​Deciding to follow her calling into the world of education, Laura returned to Nashville and earned her Master of Education at Peabody College. This led her to her work at the Oklahoma Arts Institute, creating fine arts education programs for teachers and talented high school students.

​Laura married Jeff Sandefer and is the happy mother of Sam and Charlie and step-mother to Taite. It is the inspiration of these children that led Laura and Jeff to co-found Acton Academy. Her greatest hero is her mother who was a Master Teacher. Her wisest mentor is her father who sent her off to college with two words of advice: "Be curious".