Assistant Director

Michael abandoned a promising a career in academia after his 8th grade English teacher marked as incorrect his usage of British spelling conventions on a quiz. Sensing something rotten in Denmark, he recovered from this injustice by developing a focused critique of modern, formal education. This took a few decades, but turned out to be time well spent as he faithfully followed Mark Twain’s injunction to never to let school get in the way of learning.

Strangely enough, about the time he finished his undergraduate work (B.A. English, Virginia Tech) he discovered an utter passion for teaching. He served as an Adult Basic Education and Literacy teacher in storefront offices and church basements in Appalachia for several years. He has gone on to teach dogs, infants, schoolchildren, adjudicated youth, truck drivers, college students, factory workers, and the elderly. He was awarded the VT UUSA “Advisor of the Year” award and won several awards for teaching and practicing Leadership in Virginia Tech’s Residential Leadership Community.

Eventually, after discovering community based education, Educacion Popular, the history of labor, environmental and civil rights organizing in the Appalachian South, the Amish, home-schooling, apprenticeship, vision quests, Normal Schools, Free Schools, Danish folk schools, invisible schools, vocational training, rites of passage, and native education, it was time to go - where else? - back to school. In 2007 he completed his Master of Arts in Education, Curriculum and Instruction at Virginia Tech, where his wise professors tolerated, encouraged even, his intellectual eccentricities. And there was great rejoicing.

Currently, he is totally psyched to be working with the students, staff and faculty at University Honors. Their intellectual eccentricities and unbridled enthusiasm continually remind him that learning is awesome, his 8th grade English teacher had it all wrong, and that profound things happen here at Virginia Tech. When he is not working for University Honors, he tends a small farm and enjoys spending time with his two exuberant daughters.