Jan 14 2024
Saying Yes to Life with Dr. James Sodt
“Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn, and you will.” –Vernon Howard
Join me in this episode of The Unfolding as I talk with retired professor, Community Fellow in Constructive Theology and my dear friend, Dr James Sodt about:
Being curiousStaying present and·Taking risks
About Our Guest (in his words):
Okay, so we need a bio. Let’s start with education. I received my bachelor’s degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. When I started, the question was what major to pursue. The choices were nuclear engineering, mathematics, or literature. I wound up leaving as an award-winning poet with a teaching certificate. I experienced several pedagogies that impressed me, especially R.D. Johnston, who struck us like a whirlwind; John Weigel, who was more like a volcano; and a Professor Jabker, who created an environment of data and invited us to act as professionals within it.
My first master’s was at SUNY-Brockport, near Rochester, New York, where I studied American and contemporary literature. I remember most of all “Fitzgerald” (actually, Robert Fitzgerald, I think – but he was sort of shrouded in mystery – and was mostly known by one name). His ability to invent different learning experiences within the form of a graduate class bordered on the magical. I especially remember a seminar with twenty-five students in it that actually functioned as a seminar.
It was around this time that I realized my reading was ranging from semiotics to social and behavioral sciences to engineering, physics, and math – all of which fell under the sprawling umbrella of communications. So off I went to Syracuse to study that. My second master’s was really a degree in one person – Bill Ehling. He was a communications theorist; I simply took everything he taught. In one class, I recall he handed out the final exam on the first day. Ten questions. We spent the rest of the semester coming up with our answers to them. That was intense. My doctoral work started with an interest in designing information support systems for members of Congress. It evolved into something we would call today behavioral economics and decision theory.
Next, we come to work. Leaving Syracuse, I went to the University of Kentucky in Lexington. I mostly taught social science research methodologies and information systems – here I was nominated for the university’s great teacher award. But the high point was being a co-teacher of the Deans’ Seminar in Information and Communications Policy.
Because of this class, I was invited to join AT&T as a strategist. I was part of a team that hoped to plan the largest voluntary corporate reorganization in the history of American business. The key word in that sentence is “voluntary.” Because at the invitation of the US Department of Justice, anti-trust division, we embarked instead on one of the (if not the) largest involuntary reorganizations in the history of American business. Other areas at AT&T included product design for pre-Internet information services, market management for higher education, and global market management.
Hoping to return to academia, I left AT&T to join the faculty at Susquehanna University as the Charles B. Degenstein Distinguished Professor of Communications. Eventually, I became the Director of the University’s Honors Program and was honored with the university’s highest teaching award. While there, I also was a founding faculty of the Thomas Edison State College’s Master’s of Arts in Professional Studies program where I taught the history and philosophy of technology.
Presently, I am retired from teaching. I’m not altogether mummified, however, and am now a Community Fellow in Constructive Theology at the Theological Seminary at Drew University. I’m presently working on a non-platonic metaphysics based on neuroscience and self-psychology.
Connect with Jim:
Email: jsodt@drew.edu
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