About

Hello, and thank you for visiting my website and blog.

​

This project began --appropriately, as a school project -- specifically as a graduate school assignment. I am in my second year (part-time) in the MA program in English (with an emphasis on rhetoric, writing, and digital media studies) at Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff. I worked in public relations, magazine editing, and nonprofit communications for about 20 years, but I have been teaching communication courses for Pima Community College, in Tucson, Arizona, for the past 12 years.

​

I earned a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in communication from West Virginia University back in the 1980s, and I'm ABD in educational psychology from a long-ago abandoned and now defunct program there was well. I've been drawn more to historical and critical research methods during the past two decades, and I would like to add writing and literature to the repertoire of courses I teach, and this course project is part of that overall objective.

​

Most of the teaching I do now is online, as that is where most of the growth is at the college. Through a course project during my first semester in this program, I developed a proposal for a new course, submitted it to my college’s administration, and it was accepted! I recently had the opportunity to work with an instructional design team and build the course, CMN 209, "Introduction to Communication Technology," which provides a critical examination of communication technologies, beginning with printed books, continuing through the development of motion pictures and television broadcasting, social media, and finally looking into future uses of augmented realities like the metaverse, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. I developed the course with open educational resources (OER), so students do not need to purchase a textbook. I taught the course for the first time this past semester, and I was pleased with how well the students seemed to enjoy it. I also oversee the online version of my college's public speaking course (yes, it works surprisingly well for most people).

​

I am not an expert in climate change science, but I am an experienced communicator and educator. I am interested in directing this blog to elementary school educators because my wife is an elementary school teacher, currently working with third graders. Her dedication to her students inspires me. I can think of no topic more critical to discuss in our schools and colleges than climate change. Today's young people will face great challenges as they reach adulthood, and the decisions we make today will alter their futures. I believe they deserve to be part of the discussion and part of the solutions, as we face a truly existential threat to ourselves and to the other living creatures and things on this planet.

​

"We have engineered ourselves into a position where, for the first time in history, it has become possible for man to destroy his whole species. May we not at the same time have philosophized ourselves into a position where we are no longer able to manage successfully our mental and spiritual lives?"

Joseph Wood Krutch

The Measure of Man, 1954