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Professional Background

I have been a member of the residential faculty of the GCC Business and Information Technology Department since 1982 as well as an assistant chairperson for the BPC/CIS area. Since I had been a programmer/analyst prior to being at GCC, my specialty has been teaching computer languages, including C, COBOL, FORTRAN, JavaScript, Pascal, RPG, Visual Basic and Visual Basic .NET. In addition, I have learned C#, C++, Neat/3, and Lisp.

How I spent my summer vacations…

During the summers of 1997 through 2000, I had the opportunity to work in industry for an international telecommunications corporation. Along with applying my C and Visual Basic skills, I learned, designed, and developed applications and systems using Delphi, MS Access, MS SQL, and the Rational Unified Process.

Personal Interests

China Trip 2001

On the Great Wall at Simatai

My experience during the summer of 2001 will be forever remembered as one of the most incredible in my life. I was fortunate to be chosen to participate in the MCCD China Fellowship program, and spent six weeks at Wuyi University in Jiangmen, China, a city in the southeastern province of Guangdong.

This time was spent attending lectures, teaching classes in their Foreign Language Department - English! - visiting cultural sites, eating amazing food, meeting remarkable people, and being made to feel very special.

My MCCD colleagues and I attended lectures covering an array of topics, from Chinese philosophy, educational system, minority peoples, and oral and written language to painting, food, cinema, and traditional dress. These lectures gave us a foundation for both a better comprehension and an appreciation of China, the Chinese people and their culture.

The Chinese students were very interested in their American counterparts. I explained some of the differences between a class of students at Wuyi and one of my classes at GCC: At Wuyi, all of the students in the class are Chinese; at GCC, the students are from many countries. They had a pretty good picture of this. At Wuyi, all of the students in the class are about the same age; at GCC, the students are all ages. They were amazed that I had a 72-year-old and a 13-year-old in the same class! At Wuyi, all of the students in the class have the same major; at GCC, the students have various majors. They had a hard time imagining this. At Wuyi, all of the students in the class had to pass a rigorous national exam, scoring in the top 3 to 10%; at GCC, the students did not have an entrance exam. They all wished they were going to school in the U.S.!

With foreign language (English!) students.

We visited many temples, parks, museums, and villages, usually with faculty, staff and/or students from Wuyi University as our guides. I loved the intricate roof architecture on the temples and buildings and the incredible detail of the various art forms. I was also fortunate to be able to spend an additional two weeks being a tourist. I will never forget climbing the Great Wall near Beijing and seeing the terracotta warriors at X’ian.

The Guangdong province is famous for its cuisine. I ate many things that I would never have thought of eating before, and many other things I didn’t know existed. Most everything was delicious, and I ended up gaining weight, even though I was pretty unskilled with chopsticks before the trip. I’m an expert now.

During those two months, I was warmly welcomed everywhere, even by strangers on the street. People would come up smiling, wanting to speak English with me. Schoolchildren were delighted to be able to talk to me. The people at Wuyi, especially my partner, Michael Deng Yong, were warm, friendly, and wonderful to me. The relationships I formed during my stay were the keystone of my experience.

My mother worried about me going to such a far-away, strange country for so long. I can best describe my experience with a quote from one of my emails to her: "I have an air-conditioned room, a television with a remote control, people who take good care of me, and I’m eating better than I do at home."