Resume

 THOMAS J. MEYER
tmeyer@ph.vccs.edu  or greensborospirit@yahoo.com
276 956-5532 (H); 276 656-0283 (W)
415 Devonshire Drive, Ridgeway, VA 24148

Links:

Vital Interests
Six Student Succeses
Teaching, Degrees & Professional Development
Leadership
Ten Teaching Strengths
Five Action Oriented Skills

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How a bank failure in a local community can effect the community

Vital Interests

I have experience, interest and background helping college students learn and apply
-  economics,
-  personal and corporate finance,
-  forensics, human relations, psychology for business & industry,
-  cross-cultural psychology, and
-  flight school training. 
I have four graduate courses in statistics.

Six Successful Teaching Stories and One Experiment

I have 15 years of multi-cultural college teaching experience with traditional and distant learning students including
-  the learning disabled,
-  the academically under-prepared,
-  college prepared, gifted, and
-  adult learners at two & four year colleges. 

My goal is to present course content in an understandable, personally relevant, and readily applicable manner.  Recent professional development opportunities and my degree in human relations enable me to employ cooperative learning (use of small groups, so that working together, students maximize both individual and group performance), in contrast to traditional competitive and individualistic styles of teaching.

My students succeed! 

(1) My West Pointers include
- a seat-holder on the American Stock Exchange,
- a member of the Chicago Board of Trade, and
- one who continued study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. 

(2) My Air Force Academy student pilot became a Euro-NATO jet training pilot.

(3) My 90 Boston University, Harvard, MIT, & Northeastern grads became Air Force officers, and participated in symposia with Israelis on correlates of successful combat.

(4) My Mercyhurst College and McCook Community College adults applied microeconomic principles to self-owned businesses: 
- to an auto dealership;
- a maple syrup company; and
- a water purification company.

(5) Adults at McCook College applied Microsoft product skills in business and at home.  (I taught them Microsoft Word.)
My classes included
-  bankers from four small towns,
-  a judge, a Rotary Club president, and an H&R Block franchise owner. 
-  A baker used my courses to write his memoirs, and sent me his first published book, Growing Up in Plainview. 
-  We pioneered satellite delivery to 14 Nebraskan sites.

(6) Success at Patrick Henry Community College,
- a graduate said my psych course got him his first job - teaching English in Japan;
- a deaf student received the spontaneous applause of her classmates by completing problems at my blackboard, and passed economics successfully after failing at another community college;
- a high school dropout completed my classes, became a Phi Theta Kappa officer (while I sponsored the fraternity), and earned a full scholarship.
- an auto accident victim without short term memory is currently benefiting from  Integrated Thematic Instructional Design  (Susan Kovalik's Brain-Based Learning) which I use in my class.

(7)  I’m promoting  PeopleSpeak  – my idea for creating electronic debating and discussion via videoconferencing among community college students. 
-  In Virginia we can include students from five time zones, including those in Europe. 
-  I’ve been advocating the idea for a 23-community college electronic debating society.

Teaching Experience

(1) Assistant professor    
– social sciences – West Point, NY

(2) Assistant professor
– economics/aviation – USAF Academy, CO

(3) Professor/Department chair 
– aerospace studies – Boston University, MA

(4) Assistant professor               
– business/finance - Mercyhurst College, PA

(5) Assistant professor               
– economics /personal finance- McCook Com. Col., NE

(6) Associate professor               
–  economics/psychology - Patrick Henry Com. Col., VA

Degrees and Professional Development Coursework

(1) B.S. Economics – USAF Academy 
 
(2) M.A. Economics – University of Oklahoma; 
 
(3) M.A. Human Relations – University of Oklahoma 
 
Recent graduate courses: University of Minnesota, Old Dominion University, University of Virginia 
 
Other graduate work: Rensselaer Polytechnic University, Chadron State College, and University of Oklahoma

USAF Leadership Experience

1982 – Aircraft commander – first crew to successfully refuel a C5-A, after two previous failures by other crews resulting in airborne emergencies and aborted missions.

1984-85: Professor and Chairman – Aerospace Studies Department – Managed $600,000 in Air Force engineering scholarships while increasing engineering enrollments 12% at Boston, Northeastern, Harvard, and MIT; Air Force Audit Agency ranked my program number one among all other programs in the Northeast for it strong internal controls.

1985-86: Flight commander / Airfield Manager – KC-135 jet tanker (Boeing 707 equivalent); planned Michigan’s Thunderbird Airshow for 72,500 guests.

1986-89: USAF Squadron commander – Responsible for morale and discipline of 400 military and 200 civilians.  First in athletic competition among 14 local squadrons.  Pioneered silent aerial refueling; our unit was subsequently chosen to lead U.S. bombers to first war in Iraq.  Squadron and wing garnered over half the dozen peacetime trophies in bombing among competing Australian, English, and American units -1988.

Ten Teaching Strengths

My teaching methods are driven by learning styles and abilities unique to each student class. I continually research, develop, and use successfully…

(1) Electronic Assistance
BlackBoard outlines, oral and written summaries, videos, and overhead projections to supplement lecture and discussion with auditory and visual learners.

(2) Collaborative Learning
Small groups for problem solving, issue-resolution, practicing presentation skills, providing mutual support, and for exam review sessions.

(3) Study-Buddy Duos for
-  nightly home-study consultation, and
-  knee-to-knee paired reading and note-sharing in class.

(4)  Two Minute Feedback Sessions
We begin/end class using two-minute feedback sessions, in which I ferret out and focus on elements of difficulty or under-preparedness students identify in common.

(5)  Individual Counseling
 I use one-on-one tutorials with me or with qualified tutors for learning disabled students;

(6)  Guest Speakers  
I use outside experts as speakers, including textbook authors & successful class graduates.

(7) Measurable Course Objectives
I use evaluation techniques that start with with structured course objectives preceding each question, reaction sheets on field trips and speakers, and various examination methods from
-  take-home,
-  group effort, and
-  open book
to supplement or replace standard in-class closed book tests.
 
(8) Reader-friendly Textbooks
My choice of texts are based on readability, concept load, and real world applications.

(9) Group Cooperation with Individual Accountability
I create “sink or swim together tasks” so that each pair or threesome of students have clearly stated tasks with positive interdependence as well as individual accountability.

(10) Life Skill Training
I train my student groups in the life skills they need to acquire that emphasize their
-  active participation,
-  mutual checking,
-  supportive encouragement,
-  reward and celebration.

Five Action-oriented Skills

(1) writing & speaking  
(2) traveling       
(3) hosting   
                                        (4) fund-raising  & envisioning    
                              (5) measuring results

(1)  Writing & Speaking
-  I co-authored chapter objectives and practice problems & solutions in Addison-Wesley study guides for
- Essential Foundations of Economics,
- Foundations of Macroeconomics, and
- Foundations of Microeconomics. 

-  I wrote Demand-side and Supply-side Economic Models for use at West Point, Air Force Academy, and Annapolis. 

-  I was weekly radio talk show host at Mercyhurst College for “Make It Your Business!” and editor of their Business Division Graduate Newsletter. 

-  I implemented personalized mail-merged correspondence & grading using Microsoft Access.
 

(2)  Traveling
-  I traveled with students to New York City financial and theater districts six times.
- I was an intern at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C.

(3)  Hosting
- I was Boston University’s symposia host on Correlates of Successful Military Combat.
- I was rapporteur for West Point’s Senior Conference.
- I was AF Academy’s sponsor of its Prospective Students Summer Program. 

(4) Fund-raising & Envisioning
- I won three Virginia Community College System grants for distance learning. Half my student load are distant learners, passing  the same tests and standards as in-class learners.

- I was Patrick Henry Community College 2005 nominee for a Chancellor’s Professorship for proposing to create  PeopleSpeak  – a 23-community college electronic debating society. 
 

Links

Vital Interests
Six Student Succeses
Teaching, Degrees & Professional Development
Leadership
Ten Teaching Strengths
Five Action Oriented Skills

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