About This Site and Its Author

I created this site originally just to see how it would work.  Then, I decided that it would be a good place to keep track of various things in which I’m interested, and even to host discussions between and among students in my classes.  The result of that is what you see here.  It is constantly under construction and undergoing changes of various kinds.

In case you’re interested, I am an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida.  I have been teaching since 1981, starting out as a graduate student at the University of South Florida in Tampa.  My degrees (B.A. (1981), M.A. (1983), and Ph.D (1995)) are all earned from the University of South Florida in Tampa.  I am the first woman to be granted the Ph.D. from that program, and the third graduate of it overall.  The first class I taught in 1981 was “Introduction to Logic,” a course in deductive reasoning, and at 20 years old at the time, it was quite the challenge for me to be the instructor of record and have full responsibility for the organization, content, and administration of that class.  But after the first time teaching, it became one of my passions (i.e., teaching became one of my passions, although it is also true that the course that is my personal favorite to teach remains deductive logic).  Over the past quarter-century-plus, I have taught a wide variety of courses, including social philosophy, political philosophy, modern western philosophy, introduction to philosophy, philosophical reasoning, theoretical and applied ethics, ethical theory, ethical issues of the 21st century, philosophy in the news, freedom and justice, philosophy practicum, American philosophy, and advanced ethics in science and technology.  I think there are more, but that’s a good enough list for now.

My publications and research interests tend toward ethics and social philosophy, broadly construed.  Within this broad heading are my publications on Thomas Hobbes, American philosophy, academic ethics/integrity, the ethics of friendship, supererogatory actions, theory and pedagogical methods, and the concept of forgiveness.

There are page links in the sidebar.  Click on the one in which you’re interested.  If you want to comment on a particular topic or post, just choose the link.

If you are in one of my classes and it is part of your grade in the course to contribute in some way to this blog, make sure that you use your real name when you post and that you post your contribution at the proper link.  So, for example, if you are in Modern Western Philosophy, make sure that you click on that link to the right.