Senior College Faculty – Fall, 2010

Juliet Baker has studied and taught English language and literature for forty years. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in English and pursued a Ph.D. at Berkeley. "My greatest joy," she says, "was teaching seventh, eighth, and ninth grade English and heading the English department at a school in Brookline, Massachusetts." She developed her interest in the literature of the Old Testament in the mid-seventies and has been pursuing it ever since. Today she lives with her husband in Northport.  

Betty Becker-Theye, the translator of the text for this class, is a life member of the American Translators Association and a former dean and professor emerita of the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She has previously co-facilitated a course on Jewish literature at the Belfast Free Library with Judy Stein.

Nancy Blatz taught high school math for thirty-three years in New York. During that time she attended adult education painting courses and took four watercolor classes from the Huntington Township Art League. The rest is history. When she retired to Maine, she became a member of the Midcoast Art Guild and she has since become a master watercolor instructor at Senior College.

Phil Brown is a Maine native who spent twenty years as a professional weather forecaster in the U.S. Air Force, and he continues to monitor the local weather every day. His hobbies have included running marathons, scuba diving, flying, sailing, and now motorcycling-all of which take place outside, depending to some extent on the weather.

Jose L. Cordero III has been using Facebook virtually since it was launched in 2004 and continues to be amazed by its many functions. Aside from using Facebook at home, he also uses it professionally in his capacity as student services coordinator at the University of Maine Hutchinson Center. He grew up in Owls Head, Maine, graduated from Rockland High School, and earned his B.A. in music and his M.A. in higher education at the University of Maine Orono. Currently he resides on the Orono campus with his wife and their three-year-old son Jose "Luis" Cordero IV.

Rick Davis has been digging up his family roots for almost twenty-five years, and admits that after finding 500 or so direct ancestors, he's still not finished. Students will learn from his successes-and his mistakes-and his master's degree in history will provide an additional perspective to this course.

Neal Harkness lives in Belfast and has been a fan and student of rock music his whole life. He has written on the subject for a number of publications, and is currently a rock music programmer on community radio station WERU-FM. This is the fourth in a series of very popular courses he has offered on the history of rock and roll.

Harry Kaiserian has been cooking since he was eleven and has been reading and going to the movies longer than that: this course combines three of his favorite activities. He has been writing a weekly food column, "K's Kwisine," for over twenty-five years and has taught cooking classes to a wide variety of audiences. Though not a professional cook, he has visited kitchens around the world and sampled and prepared much of the world's cuisine. Harry likes to talk about the wonderful world of cuisine, and first offered this popular class at Senior College in 2008.

Arlin T. Larson earned his B.A. in religion from the University of Redlands, and his Master of Theology and Doctor of Ministry degrees at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. His career has been a mix of parish and campus ministry, college teaching (including world religions), and administration. He currently serves as minister of the First Congregational Church in Searsport, and over the years has taught several highly regarded courses at Senior College.

Lila Nation has not only earned a master's degree in teaching French and taught French for over twenty-six years, but she also travels to France once a year to stay fluent in idioms and changing vocabulary, as well as taking frequent trips to Quebec and other French-speaking regions. She also plays cello, piano, and sings, so she'll regale you with music and stories of her travels while encouraging you to share your own experiences using the mellifluous medium of French.

Sheila Nickerson has been certified by the American Contract Bridge League to teach bridge and is a Bronze Life Master of the game. She has played bridge for over forty-five years and lived in Belfast for seven, after spending thirty-four years in Hawaii. Her bridge courses at Senior College have been extremely popular.

Roger Ptak earned his B.S. degree in physics from the University of Detroit and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University. During his academic career at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, he taught courses at all levels in physics and astronomy, introduced an astronomy program into the curriculum, and directed it from its inception until his retirement. At Senior College he has won praise and respect for his ability to make complex information readily understandable-and often entertaining. Results of his research in astronomy have been published in scientific journals, and he was principal investigator for several NASA grants. Roger and his wife live in Northport.

Mike Shannon is a naturalist, educator, and Registered Maine Guide. Whether in the forest prowling for owls or aboard ship scanning for pelagic birds, he continues to lead outings for local groups. He is recently retired from Unity College where he taught ornithology and ecological education. A former director of the National Audubon Society's camps in Connecticut and Maine (Hog Island), he has also served as master naturalist for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Mike has a long history of sharing his passion and enthusiasm for the natural world, and as many of you know, his former classes for Senior College have been wildly popular.

Paul Sheridan has been making photographs for more than forty years, and been a keen observer of the works of others all that time. He has a B. A. in art and an M.F.A. in photography. For many years he managed a large teaching photo lab for the City University of New York and taught photo courses from adult ed through the graduate level. He has offered a wide range of well-received photography classes at Senior College.

Judy Stein, a retired management consultant who taught at the Yale School of Management and at Mount Holyoke College, now coordinates a Jewish book group in Rockland and has taught several Senior College workshops. She has previously co-facilitated a course on Jewish literature at the Belfast Free Library with Betty Becker-Theye

Dick Topping has been a student of Soviet and Russian affairs for over fifty years. After having been stationed in West Berlin at the height of the Berlin Crisis, he spent thirty years at the CIA, serving as a senior analyst for both Soviet domestic politics and Soviet Russian foreign affairs. He retired from the CIA in June 1995, and has lived in Belfast for fifteen years, during which he has served on several civic boards as well as the board of the Camden Conference. He holds degrees from Lehigh University, the U. S. Army Language School, and Columbia University. He has offered several very well-received courses at Senior College, most recently "Russia Today."

Howard Torrey has had a serious interest in the history of science for many years. He received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Iowa State in 1968, and for the next thirty years taught chemical engineering, chemistry, computer programming and applications at both the college and high school level.

Baird Whitlock has taught English and American literature in ten colleges from Colby, in Maine, to the University of Hawaii, and has been head of English programs at San Francisco State, University of Wyoming, Elmira College, and Midwestern State University. He has also directed the men's glee club while teaching at Middlebury College, held the Kulas Chair of Music while at Case Western Reserve University, and been president of Simon's Rock College. His Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh centered on the English poet John Donne. Baird has led innumerable trips to Italy over the years, studying art and architecture.