Celebrating Ten Years of Teaching

“To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. I am not a teacher, only a fellow student.” — Søren Kierkegaard Inspired by the quote above (which is the anchor of my teaching philosophy), I have been learning while teaching for a decade. Ten years ago today — on Monday, June 18, 2007 — I began my career in academia when I started teaching COM 120, Effective Persuasive Writing online at what was then called Axia College (University of Phoenix‘s online junior college). It’s hard to believe that much time has passed; it feels like just yesterday when I began…

Identifying and Achieving Individual Goals

How do you identify and achieve your goals? In the video below I presented an individual goal setting session at the Mid-Year Leadership Conference of Theta Chi Fraternity at UCLA on Saturday, February 23, 2013. Having helped found the (dearly departed) UC Santa Barbara chapter of Theta Chi it was an honor to participate in this event as an alumnus instructor. Since my birthday was the day before, it was a great gift to share my knowledge with undergraduate members of an organization I admire. As an undergraduate I attended several events like this so I was well aware how events like this can positively impact…