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Education
- Ph. D. Philosophy, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA
- M. A. Philosophy, The University of Washington, Seattle, WA
- B. A. (dual) Philosophy and Psychology, The University of
Washington
- CELTA teaching certification, Cambridge University, England
- Public teaching certification, The University of Washington
Biographical
Sketch
I was born
and raised in Vancouver, Washington, then a town of maybe 25,000 people
across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon, and grew into
adolescence during the final years of baseball’s old Yankee dynasty.
(For those too young to remember it, this era ended in 1965.)
How did I end up as a faculty member at RVCC? There was little in the
family history to presage a career in college teaching, much less in
philosophy. For one thing, neither of my parents graduated high school.
(My mother grew up in a small town in rural Minnesota, and was taken to
school in a horse-drawn cart. She had to go to work at the age of 13 to
help the family to make ends meet.) And in childhood I was not exactly
the most text-inclined member of the class troop. Instead I was
enthralled with western movies and television programs, and with various
sporting events that included the Friday night fights, the Saturday
afternoon baseball game of the week, and professional wrestling from the
Portland, Oregon, Armory. In the summers, a few of us would get together
in the morning and play baseball, sometimes all day and into the dark.
Around mid-teens, though, I developed a reflective bent, and later
majored in both philosophy and psychology at the University of
Washington. During these years I also engaged in amateur boxing and
worked summers for the U. S. Forest Service, primarily as a firefighter,
stationed in the town of Estacada, Oregon. After obtaining certification
for public teaching, I entered the grad program at UW and took an M. A.
in philosophy with emphasis in ethics and philosophy of religion.
Mid-way through the degree I also began teaching at the local community
college in my home town. On occasion, and away from campus, I covered
local (Portland and Seattle) fight action for Ring magazine and wrote
feature articles on a couple of the reigning champions.
It was as an instructor that I discovered how truly interesting
philosophy could be. For several years I pieced together an income at
Portland area colleges and universities, and was allowed to craft many
new courses, some of which were fairly exotic and bore titles like
“Mysticism in the World’s Religions”, “The Birth of Psychical Research”,
and “Near-Death Experiences and Their Interpretation”. Several times I
worked together with a good friend in the local English department at
Clark College in Vancouver, where we team-taught courses on philosophy
in literature.
In the 1980’s I completed a doctoral degree in philosophy, which
provided training in Attic Greek, formal logic, and religious studies
East and West. Not long afterward I spent a year teaching English and
philosophy at an Aero-Technology institute in Nanchang, in eastern
central China. In 1991 I joined the faculty at Westminster College in
Salt Lake City, Utah, and left after four years to undertake some
writing projects. After departing from Utah I continued to write and to
teach, and spent one term as a visiting philosophy instructor for City
University at their Trencin campus in the Slovak Republic. In 1998 I was
a Visiting Fellow at the University of Wales in Lampeter, and two years
later I completed a CELTA certification for teaching English language
from Cambridge University at their Russian campus in Moscow. To date I
have written four books dealing with issues in religion, metaphysics,
and moral philosophy, and two others (one of which awaits publication)
that trace the careers of outstanding prizefighters of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
On a more personal note, five years ago (and just shy of my 50th
birthday), I became the father of a beautiful baby boy, who is now the
abiding interest of my life, and whose entrance onto the scene motivates
me to be “on my game” in every sense. My pastimes include hiking and
swimming, and I am an avid late-night reader of frontier, Old West, and
Native American history, as well as a collector of sporting memorabilia.
In recent years I have also been a sponsoring member of the Maryhill
Museum of Art in Maryhill, Washington, a haunting little oasis that lies
about two hours up the Columbia River from Vancouver. Up to the end of
the going baseball season, you may catch me some mornings at the local
espresso house, scouring a sports page for the latest box score results.
Finally, may I add, I have been pleased to make the acquaintance of
students, faculty, and administrators at Raritan Valley, and hope to
remain here for many years to come.
Publications
- Body and Soul: The Transcendence
of Materialism (HarperCollins, 1997)
- Light on the Horizon: The Joy and
Challenge of Real Ideas (Homeward Bound, 1999)
- The Prospect of Immortality
(Homeward Bound, 1998, 2001)
- A Certain Mystery (Homeward
Bound, 2000)
- Psychical Research and the
Phenomenon of Cross-Correspondence (conference monograph, 1998)
- A Man Among Men: The Life and
Ring Battles of Jim Jeffries (Homeward Bound, 2002)
- Hitters: Two-Fisted Heroes of
Boxing’s Golden Age (still in manuscript form)
- Numerous articles and reports for
professional boxing publications and Pacific Northwest boxing
promoters
Courses Taught
-
Intro to Philosophy
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Current Moral and Social Issues
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Contemporary Formal Logic
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Comparative Religion
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Philosophy of Religion
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History of Philosophy (multiple)
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Numerous “topics” courses of special
philosophical interest
Last updated 4.18.07 by HJS
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