I came to Harvey Mudd College in 1961 as an assistant professor in chemistry, having earned a PhD in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. However, my interest in philosophy had been thoroughly sparked while I was anundergraduate at Northwestern University. The \u201860s was an upsetting period in American history, with civil rights confrontations, protests against the war in Vietnam, and assassinations of important leaders. I found myself wanting to turn away from the blackboard to face my students and discuss issues of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout the \u201860s and with the permission of President Platt and my department chair, Art Campbell, I attended summer philosophy workshops, culminating with a sabbatical leave in 1968\u20139 at The London School of Economics in Karl Popper\u2019s department of philosophy of science. In the fall of 1970, I moved into the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences as associate professor of philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the following 32 years, my interests in philosophy changed from Philosophy of Science to Continental Philosophy and Environmental Philosophy. I also taught a full program in the History of Philosophy, including American Philosophy. The department\u2019s freshman year program allowed me to teach a freshman seminar on \u201cIndigenous People of the Western US\u201d and, in the late \u201990s, I also began teaching small classes in photography, which I continued doing into retirement. The results of all of this can be seen in about a dozen Amazon Kindle publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was chair of the department from 1985 to 1993 and from 1998 to 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n