A pioneer in the lifelong-learning market, The Teaching Company is a popular and growing media company that produces The Great Courses: a series of comprehensive and engaging, university-level, video and audio courses taught by the world’s greatest professors. With no tests, no homework, and no grades, The Great Courses provide the pure joy of learning to millions of satisfied lifelong learners around the world.

Since its establishment in 1990, The Teaching Company has sold more than 25 million courses. The Great Courses are delivered to customers via digital streaming, DVD, and CD sales on the e-commerce site; through select online retailers and distributors; and, most recently, through The Great Courses Plus, a digital subscription platform that PC Magazine has called “Netflix for Learning.”

The Great Courses cover a wide variety of topics ranging from traditional liberal arts subjects, such as philosophy, history, literature, and the sciences, to practical classes, in photography, foreign languages, health and wellness, business skills, and much more.
Through its unique consumer-input-driven model, The Teaching Company has developed a catalog of over 750 courses comprising over 10,000 hours of content.

In the late 1950's, the Northern Virginia Planning District Commission and a group of citizens from several local jurisdictions came together to protect Northern Virginia's rich heritage of woods, meadows, lakes and streams from the threat of suburban sprawl. These citizens, working with their local governments--Fairfax County, Arlington County and the City of Falls Church--organized under the Virginia Park Authorities Act in 1959 as the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NVRPA). They came together to plan, acquire develop and operate a system of regional parks for all Northern Virginians to enjoy.

Built between 1807 and 1809, the Aldie Gristmill was once the largest factory of its kind in Loudoun County, Virginia. The mill's tandem metal waterwheels are fully operational.
Visiting here on weekends in season features milling demonstrations when water level permits. It is special to see the double overshot millwheels working, and the water-powered technology grind and bag corn.

Today, NOVA Parks (as the organization came to be known in 2014) represents three counties and three cities -- Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, the City of Alexandria, the City of Falls Church and the City of Fairfax. NOVA Parks staff, volunteer board members appointed from each jurisdiction and many friends of the regional parks working together have preserved over 12,000 acres of the rolling and wooded Virginia countryside for you and created a priceless legacy for future generations.