User Profile

I grew up in Racine, WI, the only child of a divorced mother who busted her butt to keep us going. I attended Walden III Jr-Sr High, a place I still miss being very much. (If only I wasn't such an immature schmuck back then!) I was in the last class let in by the Principal who co-founded the school, Jackson Parker; a phenomenon which I will always maintain to be a mere coincidence. I was a member of the awesome 1990 graduating class, with 40 graduates (our highest total at that point), at least 4 of which have advanced degrees. Pretty damn good for an absurdly underfunded magnet school.
I went to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in Kenosha as a pre-med student; but during my first year I was bitten by the philosophy bug and ended my time at UWP with a double-major in philosophy and psychology. Yes, you guessed it--I gave up on pursuing a potentially lucrative career to follow what I was passionate about.
After graduating from UWP, I went to graduate school in philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago. I earned my Master's degree in 1998 and my Doctorate in 2003. My doctoral dissertation, *God and Explanation*, is a defense of philosophical naturalism over theism on explanatory grounds. Basically, my contention is that a purely naturalistic worldview gives us a better understanding of the whole range of our experience than religious theism, Christianity in particular. And on the first page of Loyola's copy is the university seal, declaring "Ad majorem Dei gloriam"--"For the greater glory of God". The irony alone was worth the work.
I started teaching part-time in 1998, at Loyola and at College of Lake County in Grayslake, IL. I worked full-time in the analytical lab of a metal refinery for a year, and as a pharmacy technician for a depressing 4 1/2 years, all the while looking to snag one of those elusive full-time teaching jobs. I was finally offered a full-time teaching position in 2006 at Illinois Valley Community College.
I am married to Christine Biegalski, who I met at Parkside. We have been married now for 11 years. We have one child, Austin, who is 10. My wife wants another child, but for the time being we have settled for adopting 2 cats as surrogates.

Friends (6):

Friend of (5):