Path to USM

I was in the first graduating class of Southampton College of Long Island University, where I majored in Philosophy and American Studies. Then I got my first master’s degree at SUNY, Cooperstown in American Folk Culture, and my second master’s at UNH in counseling. Next, I spent a year at Harvard as a teaching fellow in the Folklore and Mythology program while taking courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. My Ph.D. is in cross-cultural human development from the University of Pennsylvania.This was followed by a post-doctoral clinical research fellowship at the University of Chicago. 

A few of my most formative young adult learning experiences include watching the moonwalk, sailing on the maiden voyage of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, living in a cabin in the woods near the river, and then being given a cell in a Franciscan monastery to live as an unfrocked friar. My first teaching position was at the college I graduated from where I taught a course in folk rock lyrics as poetry. This resulted in my first book, Songs of the Open Road. My second teaching position was at Oceanics School, a semester at sea program set aboard a 300' Norwegian square-rigger, the Statsraad Lehmkuhl.