Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1165 (SoD1539) - Spotlight: Park

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1165 (SoD1539) - Spotlight: Park

So I was asked if I wanted to be featured in the Park University English department newsletter as a featured adjunct. It took them five months to get it done. :-)

I was going to be interviewed, but then I was asked to write it myself, so I pretended I was interviewed.

What I wrote follows.

Here's the header.... (the full published version follows my text).

I like this one too (one of my faves):

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2016/12/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-543-2016.html

Chris Tower is not Mr. Tower. He asks his student to call him “Chris,” reminding them that Mr. Tower is his Dad. But after teaching college subjects for over 30 years, maybe he has finally earned the Mister. “I still feel like a person named Chris, though,” he says. “I liked that some of my undergrad profs asked us to call them by their first names. I might ultimately be some 70-year-old, unretired instructor still trying to make those normal, human connections with my students despite a 50-year age gap.”

Though he earns his money as a teacher, Chris Tower is also a writer. In addition to producing a daily blog at blogspot (Google’s Blogger) named “Sense of Doubt” after a song by the late, great DAVID BOWIE, Chris has literally been writing longer than he has been teaching, though only by a little. “Though I was writing short stories and comic books from the time I could make letters and draw pictures, I was first published starting my sophomore year in high school in the local village newspaper writing a weekly column about magic and magicians. I taught my first classes a few years later while still in high school, helping teach the new computer science course on the Altair 8800, which assembled from a kit purchased through Popular Electronics.”

But Chris did not pursue a college degree in computer science, he waited until 2011 to start working on that (and is still working on it), to earn his bachelor’s degree, he started at a small private school called Kalamazoo College studying English and theatre after which he earned a Masters in Literature and a MFA in fiction writing from Western Michigan University (WMU). Since then, he has taught all forms of writing, literature, and communications; for ten years, he taught the feminist criticism of popular culture for WMU’s Gender and Women’s Studies department. “Every day I showed my students that this is what a feminist looks like and that ‘feminist’ is really a synonym for ‘humanist.’ I loved teaching that class because I could teach almost anything, like Jungian Psychology, the music of David Bowie, and films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Since being hired by Park University in 2010, Chris has taught both composition courses, writing in the online environment, and technical writing, but most often, he has taught one of the courses he loves most and has taught at four other schools over his career: Business Communications. “I love teaching students how to save the reader’s time and to build goodwill with You Attitude. It’s just as much fun as creative writing. And the experience of teaching at Park has been one of the very best of my career. I love working with those who currently serve our country or have served. I am deeply privileged to do this job.”

Though Chris has never managed to publish one of his novels, though he’s still working toward that goal, he has published widely in magazines, newspapers, comic books, reference books, literary journals, and even a book on R&B music for Gale Research publishing. 

For a year, he counted his T-shirt collection in an online journal blog called 365 T-Shirts. In addition to his current blog, he is at work on at least one novel, computer programs in Python, and articles on the history of performing magicians and comic books of the 1960s and 1970s, two of his passions. 

He teaches for three schools in addition to Park University: Colorado Technical University, Lower Columbia College, and Concordia University in Portland, Oregon.

He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and his dogs Satchel Paige (Beagle) and Ellory Queen (black lab).

When not grading like a maniac, Chris enjoys sushi, Ultimate Frisbee, cycling, role playing games, science fiction and comic book conventions, and fruit pie.

Chris wrote a longer, self-introduction that he shares with his students at

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-sense-of-doubt-blog-post-1286-self.html

It was finally published! I wrote it back in December of 2018 and it was published in May of 2019!

These are how the wheels turn in academia. :-)

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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.

I miss you so very much, Mom.

Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.

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- Days ago = 1404 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1905.08 -10:10

NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.