More About Me
Childhood...
I was born in Abington, Pennsylvania, in May of 1975, and grew up in nearby Warminster, Pennsylvania (about 45 minutes north of Philadelphia).
Some childhood photos...
1975, age 2 months |
1977, age 2 - with my cousin Sara in some dirrrty bathwater |
1978, age 2 - two-year-old glamour |
1978, age 3 - my dolls were apparently nudists |
1977 or 1978, age 2 or 3 with my cousin Sara - Wonderwoman and Supergirl: The Childhood Years |
1981, age 6 - on a school field trip at Tamanend Park in Southampton, PA |
1983 or 1984, age 8 or 9 |
1985, age 10 - with my brother Kevin in Ocean City, NJ |
the house I grew up in (and where my parents still live) |
My childhood was relatively uneventful (which I suppose is a good thing!). I lived in the same house throughout my entire childhood and my parents remained together. Apparently, the only big adjustment for me as a kid was going from being an only child to having to share my parents' attention when my younger brother Kevin was born when I was three. Family vacations primarily consisted of going to Disney World (we pretty much went every other year from the time I was 6 until I was about 16) and an occasional day or two in Ocean City, New Jersey, or camping in the Poconos during the summer. When I was a teenager, we visited the Bahamas, St. Maarten and Bermuda. In my spare time as a teenager, I made some extra money by babysitting for the children of family friends and neighbors.
I attended Alta S. Leary Elementary School, Log College Junior High School (now Log College Middle School) and William Tennent High School (all public schools in the Centennial School District in Warminster, Pennsylvania) where I was in the "gifted" program from 2nd grade through 12th grade. I was the type of kid who always really enjoyed school and I graduated from high school sixth in a graduating class of 438 students.
Following high school, I was fortunate enough to earn a Steinbright Scholarship (a four-year full academic scholarship) to Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania (a small private liberal arts college in the suburban Philadelphia area that is a 45-minute drive from where I grew up). At Ursinus, like most first year college students, I had no idea what to major in. I considered majoring in mathematics briefly, but despite having the ability to excel in math, it became clear to me that I wouldn't truly enjoy that. I had a natural predilection and aptitude for reading, writing and languages, and I was encouraged by some great professors to follow my interest and ability in those subjects. As such, I decided to be an English major with a minor in German. After fulfilling the rest of the college prerequisites, I filled up the rest of my schedule with Communication courses because they were interesting to me. Without even really trying, I ended up having enough courses in Communication to do a double major in English and Communication.
During my time in college, I spent the summers following my freshman and sophomore years working as a day camp counselor for kids ages 5-12 at a camp in Warwick, Pennsylvania. The summer after my junior year, I gave up the camp job after being invited by one of my German professors to participate in a pilot program for Ursinus students to study abroad in Tübingen, Germany (a university town that's an hour south of Stuttgart) for seven weeks. Despite my initial homesickness, I soon settled in and really loved it. It was my first trip to Europe that would be the first of many. My senior year in college I lived in the international dorm on campus and it was a great experience that has led me to have life-long friends from around the world.
In addition to the activities of the international dorm, I was also involved in such things as the German Club, the theater, the college literary magazine, the college newspaper and the college radio station. I was fortunate in that my parents covered all of the non-scholarship costs associated with me going to college, so I could concentrate solely on my studies and didn't have to work to pay for school. I did, however, make some extra money here and there during my college years tutoring local middle school and high school students in subjects such as math, English and German. During my senior year in college I worked a few hours a week in the Ursinus College Alumni Office and I actually stayed on to work more hours there the summer after I graduated (before I left for graduate school in the fall).
Some college-era photos...
December 1994 - with Danielle Denz and Sumi Jeong taking a photo with Santa on campus |
December 1994 - at home during winter break |
December 1996 - with Gudrun Ewertz at a holiday party at German professor Dr. Thelen's house |
February 1997 - with Ryan Hemphill in the international dorm we lived in |
March 1997 - with Mari Aoki on campus |
May 1997 - with Mari Aoki and Gudrun Ewertz on campus |
May 1997 - bowling with Semy Forman, Jeff Henning, Gudrun Ewertz and Richard Sappé in Limerick, PA |
May 1997 - with Semy Forman before a formal dance for the international dorm we lived in |
May 1997 - with Gudrun Ewertz and Mari Aoki at a formal dance for the international dorm we lived in |
May 1997 - with Isabelle Pijnakker in Isabelle's dorm room in the international dorm we lived in |
Following college, I was torn between going to law school or going to film school. Both seemed appealing to me for different reasons and I was so undecided that I applied to both to delay the choice. I applied to several law schools and to several film schools and got accepted everywhere I applied.
Eventually, I decided I would regret it if I didn't pursue my interest in film and television, and I chose to enter the M.F.A. program in Film & Electronic Media at American University in Washington, D.C. I knew I wanted to eventually go into teaching so pursuing an M.F.A. seemed the perfect choice for me. While at American, I had a lot of fun taking classes in Film and Video Production, Film Theory, Cross Cultural Cinema, Animation and Producing (to name a few!). I couldn't imagine sitting in classes at law school on torts and contracts after that. Production work and teaching were the things I knew I wanted to do as my career.
Some grad school-era photos...
December 1997 - with a suitemate in the dorm at American University |
August 1998 - visiting my friend Inga Schmitz in Germany |
August 1998 - visiting my friend Gudrun Ewertz in Germany |
December 1998 - at a holiday party |
April 1999 - in Washington, DC |
June 1999 - at a barbeque party |
June 1999 - at a barbeque party |
June 1999 - visiting a friend in Media, PA |
An internship that I did during my time at American led to a job offer at Haley Productions (now Allied Pixel) in Media, Pennsylvania, where I worked as a nonlinear video editor and producer.
Some production photos...
November 1998 - on a film shoot in Washington, DC |
Circa Spring 2000 - at work at Haley Productions in Media, PA |
I eventually left Haley Productions to continue my education in the Ph.D. program in Mass Media and Communication at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During this time, I began adjunct teaching at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in addition to working as a teaching and research assistant at Temple University. I also worked as a resident and programming assistant at the International House of Philadelphia during the 2001 - 2002 school year and I spent the summer of 2002 teaching at the Julian Krinsky Enrichment Camp at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania.
During the 2003-2004 school year, I began searching for a full-time teaching position in the Northeast U.S. Ideally, I wanted to find a position at a relatively small school and was looking for a job that allowed me to teach both video production and more academic/theoretical communication and media topics. I also wanted to find a place that was near a city, not in the middle of nowhere and still relatively close to my family in Pennsylvania (a short plane ride at least). As fate would have it, I saw a position advertised that met every single requirement I was looking for at Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts (5 miles from downtown Boston). After interviewing there, I knew it would be a good match and shortly thereafter, I was fortunate enough to have a job offer from them as an Assistant Professor of Communication. I moved to the Boston area in August 2004 and began teaching at Pine Manor during the fall 2004 semester. At Pine Manor I taught a variety of courses such as "Multicultural Images in the Media," "Images of Women in the Media," "Children and the Media," "Legal and Ethical Issues in Mass Communication," "Writing and Marketing Scripts and Screenplays," "The Art and Industry of Film," "Introduction to TV and Radio Production," "Digital Moviemaking," "Advanced Video Production,""Performing for Radio and Television," "First Year Seminar: A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words" and "Senior Internship Seminar."
During my time at Pine Manor I was awarded the Lindsey Professorship which allowed me to take a semester-long sabbatical leave during the Spring 2007 semester. During my sabbatical leave I had the amazing experience of serving as a visiting lecturer on the Spring 2007 Semester at Sea voyage that circumnavigated the planet over the course of three and a half months. On the ship, I taught "Intercultural Communication," "Cinema and National Identity" and "Mass Media Systems Around the World" as the ship made stops in Nassau, the Bahamas; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Salvador, Brazil; Cape Town, South Africa; Port Louis, Mauritius; Chennai, India; Penang, Malaysia; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Hong Kong, China; Qingdao, China; Kobe, Japan; Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA; and San Diego, California, USA. The experience was all the more memorable because Archbishop Desmond Tutu was onboard for the entire voyage as a distinguished lecturer-in-residence.
After five years at Pine Manor I decided to leave because the salaries Pine Manor offered were not commensurate with the cost of living in the Boston area and it was always difficult to make ends meet each year I was there. As much as I would have loved to have stayed there longer as it was an ideal job for me, it was simply not economically feasible for me to spend the rest of my career there. I also decided to leave because I wanted to move back down the Philadelphia area again to live closer to family.
During the summer of 2010, I was fortunate to get another "work trip" when I was offered a job by The Experiment in International Living to lead a group of high school students to the United Kingdom for four weeks (July 2010). Specifically, the program I led was called "United Kingdom: Capturing Britain on Film" and I helped students create a mini-documentary as we traveled throughout the United Kingdom.
Interests and Hobbies...
In college, I took an "Adventure Activities" class where we went rock climbing, rappelling, rafting and did a ropes course. The class was a lot of fun and whenever I can I like to try new things in this vein. In 2003, I went swimming with dolphins in Key Largo as a side trip during a conference I attended in Miami and in 2007, I tried horseback riding in Puerto Rico, jet-skiing and parasailing in Malaysia and skydiving in Hawai'i.
Some adventure activity photos...
April 1997 - rappelling |
April 1997 - rappelling |
April 1997 - on a ropes course |
April 1997 - on a ropes course |
May 1997 - rafting |
May 1997 - hiking on the Appalachian Trail |
May 1997 - hiking on the Appalachian Trail |
August 2003 - swimming with dolphins in Key Largo, Florida |
August 2003 - swimming with dolphins in Key Largo, Florida |
February 2007 - horseback riding in Puerto Rico |
April 2007 - jetskiing in Penang, Malaysia |
April 2007 - parasailing in Penang, Malaysia |
May 2007 - skydiving in Hawai'i |
Another interest I have is traveling. Any vacation that provides me with constant stimulation is my idea of fun (I am not a sit-on-the-beach type of person...I have to be out doing things!). So far I've been to the Bahamas, St. Maarten, Bermuda, Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the United Kingdom (England and Scotland), Puerto Rico, Brazil, South Africa, Mauritius, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, China and Japan.
Click here to see some of my travel photos and videos of my adventures.
I also really enjoy browsing the Web to try to find useful and interesting websites that make life easier. I especially like the challenge of trying to make travel plans and buy products for the cheapest price possible and am usually able to get significant discounts via coupon codes, rebates and other arcane tricks to save money! Check out some of the links I have provided in the Miscellaneous Links section for some of the websites I really like.
Family...
I come from a small immediate family - my mom Gail (born February 1951), my dad John (born June 1951) and one brother, Kevin, who is a little over three and a half years younger than me (born January 1979). They have a super-curious, super-friendly cat named Remy (born April 2006).
My parents met in high school and got married when they were 20. They had me when they were 23 and 24 and my brother when they were 27. My brother got married in 2006 to his long-time girlfriend Melissa (whom he met when they were in high school) and they had my nephew Cameron in August 2010.
My mom and dad each have one older sibling (my mom has an older brother and my dad has an older sister). I have two cousins (Sara and Ross - each around a year younger than me and my brother, respectively) on my mom's side of the family.
Everyone is in the general southeastern Pennsylvania/New Jersey/Delaware area.
Some family photos...
my mom Gail - April 2006 |
my mom Gail, brother Kevin and dad John - April 2006 |
my sister-in-law Melissa and brother Kevin - April 2006 |
my uncle Steve (my mom's brother) and aunt Nadine - April 2006 |
my cousin Ross, aunt Nadine, cousin Sara and uncle Steve (my mom's brother) - April 2006 |
the family cat Remy - July 2006 |
my mom Gail, brother Kevin and sister-in-law Melissa - October 2008 |
 my nephew Cameron - August 2010 |
