A Little Bit About Me
The Early Years
Born at the foot of the Catskill Mountains in the Hudson River town of
Kingston, New York, I had fun growing up, being a Boy Scout wandering
through the local hills, playing semi-pro baseball and amateur (very)
basketball. I slipped through high school, went to Clarkson College to
study (not an accurate description) engineering and after a while the
college suggested that I pursue other interests somewhere (anywhere)
else. I went home and went to work for Hercules Powder Company doing
machine design drafting. After 2 years of this, I was so excited about
what I was doing, I volunteered for the Army draft.
The Wild and Crazy Years
After a brief stint of being a private at Fort Hood, Texas, I wound up
at Fort Benning, Georgia in Officer Candidate School (OCS) and
eventually became an Infantry Second Lieutenant. While in OCS, I
married the girl from back home. After a time, we were blessed with 4
kids as the price was right for having kids in the Army. We managed to
go to Korea (after the war) and I got to go to Vietnam (during the
war). Aside from the time in Korea and Vietnam, while in the Army I
either went to school or was involved in creating or presenting
training. Somewhere in there I also wound up in parachute training and
Ranger School. I told you it was wild and crazy.
The More Mature Years
Finished my undergraduate degree in business from American University
then went on to earn an M.B.A. from Georgia State. While still in
Georgia, worked briefly as a business consultant, banker and teacher.
Moved to Orlando during the early 70's building boom to work for a
local contracting outfit, arrived just in time for the boom to go bust.
Taught high school briefly then became Academic Dean at a local junior
business college. Worked on a doctorate in vocational education with
Nova University for 2 years but didn't finish. Financial woes at my
educational institution caused me to move on to someplace where the pay
was steady so I became a manager in a retail chain. Good pay, lousy
hours. Went back into education at a local senior business college and
ran their M.B.A. and M.P.A. programs (designed the M.P.A. program) for
about 2 years and helped program grow from 4 to 85 students in that
time. More institutional financial problems and, being new to the
institution and relatively expensive, I was once again reviewing career
opportunities. Since then, my oldest son and I have been restoring
old cars and assembling kit cars as a small business and I
have been continuing my interest in education by teaching part time at
Valencia and investigating ways in which the Internet might be used to
present educational materials.
Other Stuff.
Proud of my kids, they have presented my wife and me with 14
grandchildren. They are all successful in their own way and we have
never had to bail any of them out of jail. (May have been some close
calls we never heard about.) As for me, I like to read (adventure,
history, computer stuff), build computers, swim, wander through the
woods when I can, work with Boy Scouts, study management theory, swap
ideas with anybody interested in the topic (almost any) under
discussion and work on putting together business courses for the
Internet. It's fun to wake up every day.
Here are links to the courses I teach on line. For the Spring session ,
I will be teaching one Introduction to Businesses course onlime and a
regular class room course on the West Campus.. If you are interested in
enrolling in these courses, please look at the web sites. For the
online course, please read the "HOW TO" section carefully. You will see
that all my online classes require you to participate in a regularly
scheduled weekly chat session. These are all interactive classes. not
simply e-mail correspondence courses. Don't schedule other classes on
the night chat sessions are held for your class (Tuesday from 6:00 to
7:30 p.m.).
Introduction to Business (Online): http://faculty.valenciacc.edu/redwards/intindexspg07.html
Introduction to Business Classroom sessions: http://faculty.valenciacc.edu/redwards/Spg06Classroom
C. Russell Edwards, Jr.
Adjunct Professor of Business
E-Mail: russe@cfl.rr.com
Chat name : Prof_E