Who am I?

For those interested, let me tell you a little about myself.

I am a native of Central Florida. I attended college at the University of Central Florida where I earned both a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master’s degree in Applied Sociology. I later went on to earn a Doctoral degree in Higher Educational Leadership from Nova Southeastern University.

I have worked in several different fields over the years. My first career was in retail at Sears, Roebuck and Company. While at Sears, I worked in several different departments and worked in a variety of positions including customer service, sales, and management. After leaving Sears, I went into the mental health field as a counselor at a crisis stabilization unit. Both of these careers were interesting, challenging, and rewarding but something seemed to be missing: I had a desire to teach.

I was hired at Valencia Community College, East Campus, in 1995 where I taught Sociology as an adjunct professor. In no time at all, I fell in love with teaching and knew it was for me. While teaching part-time at Valencia, I also taught upper division Sociology courses at Barry University. In 2002, I earned tenure as a full-time professor and have been teaching Sociology and Education courses at the Osceola Campus ever since. 

My philosophy on life is that you must “get to know who you are” and live life to its fullest. Though I still feel I have work to do in each of these areas, I have also come a long way over the years. Really getting to know oneself is a bit of a challenge while at the same time trying to reconcile conflicting ideals taught to you throughout life by others. I have come to understand that you must discover who you truly are and not allow others to make you want they want you to be. Living life to its fullest is the easy part if you make it a priority. To me, living life to its fullest means challenging myself to do things I could never see myself doing. For me, that has included earning a pilot’s license, driving a race car, and skydiving to mention a few things. For someone that has lived his entire life in the same area, traveling has become very exciting to me as it allows me to learn about other people, cultures, and ways of life and thinking. Without question, my favorite hobby is traveling. As you can see in the “My Pictures” section of this website, I have been very fortunate to have traveled to all fifty U.S. states, to numerous countries globally, and to every continent (even Antarctica). While traveling, not only do I get to learn about people and things I don’t know much about, I also seem to learn a lot about myself. 

In 1995, I met my husband who is pictured on this page. Spencer is an amazing person in so many ways including his positive outlook on life and his caring and loving nature. He has been instrumental in challenging me to be all I can be. He has helped me to fulfill my desire to truly live life to its fullest and after all isn’t that what life is about?