(If this is more than you wanted to know about me, blame the administration, which thought my initial biographical sketch was too sketchy.)

After graduating from Cal State LA in 1969 I became a Certified Public Accountant with Arthur Young & Co in Orange County, CA. After a couple years of that I took a position as Controller and later Chief Financial Officer with a land development/homebuilding firm and soon became a partner in the business, which at the time was family-owned. During my seven years there, the business grew from $8 million in annual sales to over $250 million in sales, becoming one of the largest such firms in the U.S., and enabling me to retire to Lake Tahoe with my wife. We soon became involved in quarterhorses, and built a breeding ranch in Placerville, CA, between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. Our prize stud (Grand Champion Stallion of the 1980 Cow Palace show in San Francisco) unfortunately died prematurely because of a genetic heart defect, and my former partners invited me back to Southern California, where I oversaw the firm’s land acquisition, property management & leasing, and development of a large planned community. While that was interesting, I soon began to feel that some form of teaching might be of more value, and so returned to school for some graduate work, and since 1997 have been teaching at Victor Valley College (history), Barstow College (humanities), California Baptist University (humanities), and Chapman University (history).

I have taken several Masters Degrees by Distance Education over the last few years (MA in Humanities with a History Concentration from CSU Dominguez Hills, where I also completed course work for an MBA; MA Religion from Liberty University; and a Master of Public Administration as well as a MS – Management of Technology from Golden Gate University) so I learned how I’d like it done as a student, and designed this course accordingly—to hopefully allow you to learn a fair amount from it without an overwhelming amount of effort or stress. I hope you’ll think I succeeded.

Be sure to post your own Introductory Bio this first week; that’s all the posting required for Week 1, just so I (and your classmates) know who’s who.