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randy thornton
Randy ThorntonTitle: Academic Technology ConsultantContact Information:
BA, summa cum laude, University of Texas, 1980
The Official FAQ
My Teaching Background (1999-2005)From 1999 until I came to UPS in Sep 2005, I taught at Clackamas Community College outside Portland, OR. I was part of the exploited adjunct faculty, and taught a full or more than full time course load (4 or 5 courses per quarter, plus summer school) at a 56% pay rate. I wonder why I left? Regular courses I taught once or twice a term were:
My Academic InterestsAs a result of my teaching the last few years, I have been working actively in three interrelated areas:
My Technology Experience (1989-1999)During my recent teaching days, I spent much time helping the college I taught at adopt electronic classrooms and technologies. Given my computer background (below), I was a natural to first use and then help colleagues use computers, software, media and projectors in the classroom. Also, I was one of the early users of Blackboard to supplement my classes. I worked in computers and especially in computer networking from 1988 to 1999. I lived in New York City and worked in the corporate environment, mostly in large corporate law firms, both as an employee and as an independent consultant. I worked for myself as an independent consultant in New York from 1994 to 1998, doing projects for major law firms. My business name was "The LAN Guide Company", and I was part of a group of independent consultants and friends who did business together on projects, mostly in the legal area. I'm a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), and also certified in PC DOCS document management system. I got both of these in the late 90s. My areas of past technical expertise include network administration for Novell NetWare, Windows NT; system administration for various email systems (cc:Mail, WordPerfect Office, Groupwise, Lotus Notes & Domino, Exchange); document management design and administration (Softsolutions, iManage and PCDOCS.) I've used, supported and/or migrated to/or from just about every major LAN OS & PC Desktop software of the last 20 years. During the late 90s I spent more and more time managing projects, and also doing conference software demonstrations for consulting companies I worked for, mostly about NT, Exchange, and Eastman Workflow products. I have also done programming, mostly writing system administration and support tools, in any variety of languages, including C (including the NetWare API), QuickBasic, VB, dBase III, Winbatch, Perl and PHP, and a bunch of other weird scripting languages.
My Education (1976-1988)I received my M.A. and M.Phil. degrees from Columbia University in New York City. I lived in Pune, India for two years, where I did my doctoral research at the University of Pune in the Center for the Advanced Study of Sanskit. I also did research at Deccan College Post-Graduate Research Institute, where I read Sanskrit with Prof. R. Venugopalan. My (drafted but never defended) disseration was on "Grammatical Meaning and Narrative Structure in Epic Sanskrit." Most of my Sanskrit work was done with Barbara Stoler Miller and Alex Wayman. My dissertation supervisor and linguistics mentor was Prof. William Diver, founder of the what has come to be known as the Columbia School of Linguistics, now carried on by his students. For two years I taught Introductory Sanskrit at Columbia, and before that for four years I worked in Lehman Library as assistant to the Bibliography for South Asia. I also worked at The New York Public Library curating an exhibition on rare books in India as part of the Festival of India in 1984-5. In addition to Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, I have studied a number of other languages, including Pali, Hindi and Urdu; Avestan and Old Persian; German, French, etc. I have a strong interest in Indo-European Comparative Linguistics and the interface between language, literature and culture (an area of study once known as Philology.) My undergraduate studies were in Classics and Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. My senior thesis was on Martianus Capella and the Late Latin tradition of the Liberales Artes. Robert Solomon was first to interest me in Nietzsche. I studied Greek and many other things with master raconteur Douglass Parker, most famous for his ribald translations of Aristophanes. My Turn OnsBet you looked down here first, didn't you?
I work on watching film lists from well known critics to broaden my perpective on film. I've seen all the films on the AFI, AFI funniest, AFI thrillers, both Roger Ebert 'Greatest' books, Time Out Magazine's top 100 Critic's poll and top 100 Reader's poll, the Village Voice top 100 list, Time Magazine's top 100 list, British critic Barry Norman's book, and French critic Claude Beylie's Les films-clés du cinéma. Last summer I finished a several month project to watch all the films on the British Film Institute's list of top 100 British films of all time. I intermittently work on Steven Schneider's book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. I'm over the 900 mark. Here is my film collection on imdb. I also have a serious interest in science fiction film, especially early, classic 50's, and "foreign" sci-fi. Here is my sci-fi collection on imdb. My top personal favorites:
Other directors I like are Shyam Benegal, Buñuel, Kairostami, Godard (goes without saying), In addition to certain national cinemas (French, Japanese, Iranian and of course, Indian) I like a really good (or really bad!) film noir, as well as certain classic Hollywood and French films from the 30s and 40s.
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