The Rudy Project

The Project

I became the value of a bound variable sometime during the late 'fifties in Elizabethtown, PA. Gogi Grant's The Wayward Wind would have been on the radio at the time of conception. But I try not to think about that. After graduating from Western Maryland College (now called McDaniel College) in 1979 with a major in philosophy and an unwarranted positive outlook, I went on to earn my M.A. in philosophy at Northern Illinois University in 1982 and my Ph.D. in philosophy at Syracuse University in 1989. My dissertation, under the direction of William P. Alston, was on the nature of knowledge. It all seems like a dream to me now.

Before retiring in 2023, I was an associate professor in the Philosophy Program at Northern Kentucky University, where I regularly taught unpopular courses in metaphysics and epistemology. I long ago co-authored a textbook entitled Theories of Knowledge and Reality, which is still used today by some school in Canada. So, yes, I have that going for me. My teaching and research interests included the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and craft beers. I began at NKU in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell and Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web. It seemed like the planet was opening up a bit.

I also served as the Director of the Integrative Studies program at NKU, which offers an A.A., B.A. and M.A. in Integrative Studies. This is an interdisciplinary program in which students integrate work from different disciplinary or professional programs to design a unique course of study their parents inevitably disapprove of. They will get jobs eventually, so just let it go.

My interests include travel, hiking, and photography; food, coffee and beer; building bird houses, gardening, and struggling with current events. All of this I pursue in the future, unless my course is changed by some wayward wind, or I end up in the witness protection program.