JASON A. BEYER

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

    I was born and raised in Racine, WI.  I attended Walden III Jr.-Sr. High School from 1983-1990.  Those outside of Racine probably don't know about Walden.  It is a magnet school serving grades 6-12.  It was originally founded in 1971 by Jackson Parker and David Lloyd Johnston, two doctoral students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who developed the school as a living experiment for their ideas on curriculum development and assessment.  The school was actually named by the students; Walden, from Henry David Thoreau's Walden, just managed to beat out Frank Zappa High School--no joke!  While ridiculously underfunded (things like library books and science equipment were often paid for by the faculty), due to the incredible dedication of its faculty and staff, Walden became a startling success.  It test scores consistently ranked in the top ten in the state across all grade levels.  During the years I was there, despite never reaching a student body of 400 (for Jr. High and High School combined), we had National Merit Scholarship finalists for 4 consecutive years; a tradition that has continued to this day.  Walden has been recognized both within the state and nationally for its excellence and innovation in education.  Out of my graduating class of 40 people (at the time, the largest in the school's history), at least 6 have gone on to attain higher degrees; at least 4 of them, including myself (in philosophy) and my best friend Ashley (in evolutionary biology) attaining doctoral-level degrees.

    After graduation, I went to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha, WI, where my original intent was to enter the pre-medical program (one of the fields where U.W.-P. is nationally renowned) and then transfer to medical school.  However, in my first semester I took Introduction to Philosophy with (now retired) Professor Wayne G. Johnson and was completely captivated by it.  I took his Philosophy of Religion course the next semester, and by the next fall I was taking at least 3 philosophy courses nearly every semester, mostly with Wayne and my undergrad advisor (also now retired) A. Aaron Snyder, but also with Professor John L. Longeway, Professor David S. Levin and Joe Pearson, who was adjunct faculty at the time, but is now a full-time senior instructor.  After fooling around with my majors and minors a few times, I left Parkside with a B.S. cum laude in philosophy and psychology, both with honors.
    My time at Parkside is still a special memory for me.  I was heavily involved in student activities, having served as both a Senator and Associate Justice in the Parkside Student Government Association (earning its Distinguished Service Award in both positions, 1992 and 1995), serving as P.S.G.A.'s representative on the Student Organization Council, and holding officer positions in L'Alliance des Amis/French Club (interim President), Parkside Philosophical Society (Secretary/Treasurer, Vice-President, President and Prophet) and Psychology Club (Treasurer).  I was inducted into Psi Chi (the national honors society for psychology) and received Parkside's 1992 Emerging Leader Award.  I was also involved several times in Parkside's annual Model Organization of American States for Racine, Kenosha and Milwaukee area high schools.
    Parkside is also where I met my wife Christine.  We first met in Abnormal Psychology, the same course in which her parents had met when they were in school.  We met in January of 1994, were engaged in April of 1995, and married in June of 1996.  Our son Austin was born in 1997.

    After completing my studies at Parkside, I went to graduate school at Loyola University of Chicago for philosophy.  Loyola was an outstanding academic experience, providing me the opportunity to study under several outstanding philosophers, including Tom Carson, Sue Cunningham (now retired), David Ingram, Heidi Malm, Paul Moser (my dissertation supervisor), Jennifer Parks, Father Leo Sweeney, S.J. (now deceased), and J. D. Trout (my graduate advisor).  I completed my M.A. in 1998 with the thesis The Presumption of Atheism: Theism, Atheism and the Burden of Proof.  I finished my coursework the next year, and spend the following several years working full-time and teaching part-time while working on my dissertation.  I completed the requirements for the Ph.D. in 2003 with the dissertation God and Explanation: A Defense of Philosophical Naturalism.  A slightly revised version of my dissertation was published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2007 under the painfully boring (but descriptive) title A Comparison of Judeo-Christian Theism and Philosophical Naturalism as Explanatory Worldviews.

    During my time at Loyola, I lived with my (soon to be) wife in Chicago for a year.  When our son was born, we moved in with my in-laws in Libertyville, IL for several years so that I could complete school.  We then lived in Lindenhurst, IL for 6 years before moving to Ottawa, IL when I received a teaching post here at I.V.C.C.  We have one son, Austin; and three surrogate children: our cats Spindle (who we adopted from a shelter in 2001), Starlight (also adopted from a shelter in 2003) and Twinkle (a 3-month old stray we took in in 2008).

    I got my first start teaching at Loyola in the summer of 1998.  My first course was on the Philosophy of Science, taught twice a week for three hours over an 8-week period to a group of 10 students with no background in either philosophy or the sciences.  Talk about a trial by fire.  I taught part-time at Loyola through the spring 2000 semester, teaching primarily Philosophy of Religion and Philosophy of Psychology.  I also taught part-time at College of Lake County in Grayslake, IL, from the spring 1999 semester through the summer 2006 semester.  I taught Ethics, Introduction to Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion and Critical Thinking.  I also taught two themed ethics courses: Sexual Ethics and The Frontiers of Ethics, which addressed ethical issues that arise at ethnic, racial and national boundaries.  I was finally hired to teach full-time here at IVCC starting in the fall 2006 semester, and was awarded tenure in March of 2009.

    I have also held two full-time jobs outside of academia.  I worked for a year in the analytical lab of R. Lavin and Sons, a metal refinery in North Chicago.  I worked there from June of 2000 until July of 2001, when the company went out of business.  After 8 months of job-hunting, the desperation that sets in after the unemployment "benefits" run out led me to accept a position at Walgreen's as a pharmacy technician.  I intended to ride this out while looking for a better full-time job, preferably a teaching one.  Thanks to the impact of Reaganomics II, jobs were a scarce commodity (I met others with advanced degrees working service-industry jobs), and I wound up working for Walgreen's for just over 4 years until I was offered the position here at IVCC.  My experience in the so-called "real" world did have one significant lasting effect on me: it made me into a committed Marxist.

    During this time I also had several works published.  I did book reviews for Auslegung, The American Philosophical Association Newsletters and Teaching Philosophy.  I also published original articles or critiques in 2 student journals: Kinesis and Nexus, as well as three professional journals: The Journal of Social Philosophy, International Journal of Applied Philosophy and Sophia.  This will give people an idea of how bad the college and university teaching job market was--despite both years of part-time teaching experience and a significant publication history, I was on the job market five years (three after earning the Ph.D.) before being offered a full-time position.

    I am hoping to continue to do research.  I am working on developing two papers ("Triangulating Same-Sex Marriage" and "Language Rights of Immigrants"); and have ideas for many more (several developing ideas I started in my dissertation).  I would like to someday edit anthologies on applied ethics, sexual ethics, philosophical problems of the Holocaust, philosophy of religion, and an introduction to philosophy text that focuses on my vision of philosophy as a radical enterprise.  I am in the first stages of research and proposal development for an introductory textbook on principles of sexual ethics; and I also plan on someday producing an ethics textbook and a monograph on evil.  In the meantime, I have written many letters for local papers (including a stint of the Write Team for The Times in Ottawa) and put on several academic presentations both on and off campus.