Teaching

My role as Academic Coordinator really involves the relationship of the Museum of Art & Archaeology to higher education, and I do bring a considerable amount and variety of higher education experience to this challenge. I began teaching history and social studies in the early Seventies at a Detroit high school, then worked for awhile in adult education. In the early Eighties I earned a doctorate in American Studies (Material Culture Studies emphasis) at Saint Louis University, where I served as a Graduate Teaching Fellow and on the Graduate Council.

After graduation I worked as a Museum Educator at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (Gateway Arch) on the Saint Louis riverfront. At the Museum of Westward Expansion, I interpreted museum artifacts (including the Arch itself) to local, national, and international visitors. That exciting experience changed my entire approach to teaching, so that artifacts became the focal point for my teaching activities, a valuable counterpoint to memory and historical documents.

In the late Eighties I moved to central Minnesota. There I taught at Saint Cloud State University for fifteen years until retiring from the university as Emeritus Professor and Director of the Heritage Preservation Program. I served on the Faculty Senate, Curriculum Committee, the university’s Strategic Planning Committee, and chaired the Community Relations Committee for the university. I also was a Scholar at the Centre for British Studies, a Research Fellow for the Northwest Area Foundation (Saint Paul), served on the university’s Center for Teaching Excellence, and received an Outstanding Faculty Award.

After returning to my home state of Missouri, I taught a distance learning course at Central Methodist University and served as Guest Lecturer in American Culture Studies at Washington University in Saint Louis, teaching courses on heritage preservation, urban design, research methods, and material culture studies. Like Willa Cather’s beloved professor Gaston Cleric in My Antonia, my teaching goal is to "bring the antique past out of the shadows."

Guest Lecture