A Short Autobiography
I was born on Christmas in 1961 in Santa Monica, California and grew up in West Los Angeles. After high school I went to Santa Monica College for two years, and then transferred to the University of California at Riverside, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles. I majored in Liberal Studies, which required two emphasis areas, in my case Psychology and Administrative Studies. During the summers and over winter breaks I worked at the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) in the School of Education at UCLA; HERI has conducted a large survey of American college freshmen ("The American Freshman National Norms") every year since the early 1960s and I learned a lot about social science research there.
After I graduated from UCR in 1985 I worked in the Graduate Fellowship and Student Support Office (now the Graduate Student Support office) at UCLA. After three years I missed the creation and exchange of ideas of college and decided to apply to graduate school. Since I had always been intrigued by media and technology and their uses and impacts, I tried to find a field in which I could study them. I narrowed the search to a handful of programs and in the fall of 1988 entered the doctoral program in Communication at Stanford University.
I loved living in the Bay Area and the program at Stanford was challenging and rewarding; I also met some people there who have been life-long friends. When I was finishing the program in 1992 I applied and interviewed for assistant professor positions in different parts of the U.S. and chose Temple University in Philadelphia. I knew little about the east coast and nothing about the city of Philadelphia, but I've enjoyed living and working here.
For the fall 1999 and fall 2000 semesters I had the great opportunity to serve as faculty director of Temple's undergraduate program in London. I directed the Media & Communication (M&C) doctoral program in 2001-2004 and 2010-2016 and served as chair of the Media Studies and Production department (then called Broadcasting, Telecommunications and Mass Media) for two years (2005-2007), as co-chair of MSP in 2018-2022, and chair again since 2022. I get great satisfaction from teaching, conducting research and writing about a variety of media phenomena, especially those related to telepresence (visit the web site of the International Society for Presence Research (ISPR), which I lead as president, for more information).
I'm the middle of three sons and most of my family lives in Los Angeles. Among many other things, I enjoy music, bike riding, trains, antique and modern clocks, most desserts (favorites include pumpkin and matcha), and animals; from 1993 to 2005 I had a wonderful sweet dog, a black lab mix named Sidra.
Last updated: January 2025