Gender

Male

Location

Chicago, IL

Birthday:

April 8

About me

Out going, sociable, analytical with philosophical leanings.

What is your current career title or dream job?

Retired (Emeritus) University of Illinois Faculty. Although my training is ion Microbiology, my interest shifted to reforming education. To this end, I am the founder of the Center for Integrative Learning and the Science Skills Center. I believe that the fragmented way we are now doling out information in bit and pieces spread over a long time is detrimental to learning and growing especially when our minds and psyches are hard wired to want and process information as a summary and in an overview manner. The curriculum which I have thus designed has no subjects; all knowledge being collected and integrated in a chronological order instead. This converts all what we know and have learned into a fascinating story of human evolution which the students can readily identify with and since we are also time ans space creatures, we find something to anchor on to learn and further grow from that point. This sort of integration also allows us to sift and sort the accumulated information removing redundancies and duplications in the process leaving the essence of what needs to be learned and mastered. This also shrinks the spread out knowledge for instance, science gets reduced to mere 150 concepts and skills which if learned first in a hands-on fashion in lab setting make the rest of science easy to decipher and pursue. Same happens to the rest of our knowledge of art, music, humanities, economics,sociology and psychology etc. They also shrink and when their essence is merged with that of science we end up having a holistic collage of practically the whole of our functional knowledge making us versatile instead of a narrow specialist! There are other unexpected outcomes of this form of teaching and learning. For one, it generates self confidence in the individual so much so that a new form of therapy called Technotherapy(TM) has come out of it. Also the number of learning disabilities in our general population seem to be less when the students are taught by this integrative method of teaching compared to the conventional method now in vogue. It also enhances student retention and reduces drop out rate.

Background/Education/Experience

PH.D., Ohio State University, 1963

Organizations & clubs

None now. Previously: American Society of Microbiology and the New York Academy of science.

What languages do you speak?

English, Urdu, Punjabi and a fair amount of Spanish

Hobbies & interests

Travel, analysis and discussion on current topics especially societal issues and their solutions.Reading. Spirituality especially the meanderings of the yearning souls.

Looking for:

networking