I was fortunate to attend a very good public school in Pennsylvania when I was growing up. I had teachers who were dedicated to their profession, exemplary in their teaching, and supportive of their students. Some of the best teachers I have had in my life taught in that school system.

I was also a prolific reader, not only of popular fiction but also classic literature and non-fiction. My junior high English teacher gave us a list of books which she said we should read before attending college, and I began working my way through the list. Somewhere over the years, I lost that well-worn sheet of paper, but I know that there are works from the list that I still have not read. I did tackle some of the lengthier works including the unedited full version of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha and the King James Bible, which I read several times before graduating. Once entering college, I had less time to read due to work and studies, but for quite a few years continued a heavy reading schedule beyond the requirements of my classes.

I had developed an interest in science beginning in fourth grade which has continued to the present although nearly all of my formal education in science ended with high school.My mother subscribed to the first eight volumes of the Life Nature Library series for me when I was in junior high, and I read each one as it arrived. My original plans for a career were either to work in the field of physics or astrophysics, or teach high school physics. These were the days of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. Those plans changed after I became involved with a teen ministry in York, PA, Teen Encounter, an organization similar to Youth for Christ or the Word of Life Bible Clubs. I changed my plans and enrolled in a Christian college with the intent of going back and working in that ministry. In my senior year of high school, I was introduced to the early works of the Creation Research Society through the parent organization for Teen Encounter, and read many of those works as well, both then, and later while in college. Just prior to starting my master's in English, I was reading a number of popular works on quantum mechanics which had recently been published. Those ended being good background when I took Literary Criticism my second semester of my Master of Arts: English program.

My senior year of high school, I attended classes two nights a week, earning 12 credits in religion and applied religious studies at Lancaster Bible School (now Lancaster Bible College) before attending Tennessee Temple College (later University) after graduation. I still had an interest in science and math, so I originally registered as a Bible major with a math minor at Temple. However, by the end of the first semester, I changed to a vocal music minor, which I changed again to a psychology minor my senior year due to financial and time conflicts.

By the time I was finishing my college degree, the Teen Encounter ministry had closed its doors. Temple's policy was that, if you did not know what to do at graduation, keep going to school, so I did. My original plan was a dual degree Master of Divinity and Master of Youth Work. As time went on, I realized that my read desire was to teach. I was having extensive physical problems during those seminary years, so I abandoned the plan for the MDiv. My dilemma was whether I should return to the college for a secondary education degree or continue in the seminary and get a Christian School Administration degree, which included courses in pedagogy and curriculum design. With the courses I had already taken I was halfway to gaining that degree. Another significant motivation to stay in the seminary program was that its semester cost was one-third that of the college semester cost (The seminary program at the time was being subsidized by donors). I convinced myself to stay in the seminary. Unfortunately, at graduation, I was both over and under qualified for teaching in a Christian school, lacking an academic area of expertise except in Bible and better educated as an administrator than most of the administrators of the schools where I was applying. The result was that I could not find a place to teach.

Four years after finishing my work at Temple, I was discouraged and depressed. My wife ordered a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga catalog and told me to find something I could teach. Degrees in science or math meant completely starting over. I was better placed to pursue a degree in history, but my best option was a degree in English. I enjoyed reading, writing, and analyzing literature; had always done well in my English classes; and those years reading the classics had given me a good background, so I entered the program. Since my undergraduate degree was not in English, I was required to complete 18 undergraduate hours in English in order to pursue the masters, which I was happy to do. I began with the intent to follow the literature track, became involved in the creative writing track, and followed the core requirements for both tracks. I finished my studies declaring for the writing track while doing a literary master's project.

My teaching career reflects my diverse educational background. I began teaching remedial and developmental writing, eventually teaching some courses in learning preparation, compostion, creative writing, humanities, and mythology. I was early involved in technology, working in the school writing lab helping students with both their writing and the technology. I taught a number of Instructional Televised Fixed Services writing courses (students in the classroom simulataneously with students in remote classrooms via television and conference call). The distance learning administrator hired me to create a prototype online class delivery system, which I did by reprograming a bulletin board service for multiple users and integrating it with WordPerfect© and compiled MSDOS batch files. I also began working on campus web sites, created a personal web site containing student resources (the embryo for what has become this web site), and eventually the campus English Composition I online course. As a result of those efforts, I was tasked with developing the campus world mythology course for online delivery. I also served as web master for several projects.

Total: 285 hours (171 undergrad / 114 grad)

*sociology, physical science, speech, physical education