I certainly appreciate your interest in my education.

Formal Post-Graduate Work

Most recently, I was a PhD candidate in the information science program at the Claremont Graduate University. I completed a few classes toward the degree and then withdrew from the program to lead my employer's intranet project.

My favorite class at Claremont was an analysis and design course taught by a partner from Anderson Consulting. The insights she presented from her many engagements were fascinating.

I also enjoyed the occasional seminar by Peter Drucker, noted management expert and an instructor at the school.

Graduate School

I have a Master of Science degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California (USC).

This is an unusual, multi-disciplinary degree that I like to describe as "an MBA with more technology and less accounting." It is notable for the number of shuttle astronauts that have earned the degree.

The USC catalog states "The Master of Science in Systems Management integrates knowledge derived from the management, engineering and behavioral sciences to enable its graduates to effectively manage complex technological systems for quality and productivity. Within its curriculum is course work that teaches management of the complexity of the total system; the effective use of people and technology within the system; the use of quantitative analysis for decision-making; and the management of information and information and telecommunications technology."

My favorite class there was Decision Analysis, which gave me some useful tools to solve difficult problems, especially those with multiple stakeholders. It covered decision trees, influence diagrams, and multi-attribute rating techniques. I use these techniques regularly and have received many requests for additional information. Fortunately, there is a recent book that covers the topic -- just click here.

I didn't care for the Operations Modeling class, because the instructor did not allow us to use computers. Inverting all of those matrices by hand was quite a chore!

Undergraduate

I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH).

I particularly enjoyed the programming languages course I took as part of my undergrad. We had to write non-trivial programs in a handful of languages: Assembly, Ada, C, Fortran, Pascal, and Prolog. I took this course at UCI, along with most of my lower-division requirements.

For my least-favorite class, I make the unlikely nomination of Political Science 101 -- American Institutions. It was taught by an activist who traced most of the successes and failures of the United States to slavery. Some of these links were quite tenuous and I regularly asked for academic references to refereed journals. Even though it was some time ago, I remember a common assertion that he could never quite prove to my satisfaction: "Most of the capital of the Fortune 500 can be traced to the unpaid labor of African slaves." I learned my lesson when I opened my report card: C.

Other Training

I have an advanced certification in Notes/Domino administration. The official designation is "Principal CLP Notes System Administrator". For details on Lotus certification programs click here.

I am a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). For details on Microsoft certification programs click here.

I have completed the "Advanced Leadership" program offered by my employer. It was taught by industry luminaries and instructors from Harvard and USC.

I have attended quite a number of training courses in the areas of networking, Windows NT, and IBM AIX.

I took my first class in C at CalTech and a short course in computer device drivers at Northwestern.

I have also taught classes in programming, networking, and information systems at the university level. You can get to the course outlines via my downloads page, and see the student course evaluations on the references page.