with Mark Weinstein
Born and raised:
Brooklyn's Fort Green Projects
Hometown:
Glen Ridge
Education:
Ph.D., City University of New York
M.A., City College of New York
B.A., Brooklyn College
Children: Son, Jack, a philosophy
professor at the University of North Dakota; and daughter, Rebecca, an
attorney and director of a nonprofit that lobbies for people with disabilities
Favorite food:
Brazilian black bean stew
The secret to his marinara
sauce:
After you fry the garlic add a can of anchovies. They disappear in the
oil but it adds a real kick.
Last movie seen:
"City of God"
Person you admire: Saxophone player John Coltrane. He's my guiding North Star because he's as far from me as the North Star, but he points the direction.
Something most people wouldn't know about you: The album I played trombone on in 1967 is considered one of the most influential in the history of Latin jazz.
Mark Weinstein
has been rejuvenated, but the transformation did not come overnight and
was not without its trying moments. A professor in Educational Foundations
since 1987, Mark began feeling disconnected from his undergraduate students.
"I believe you teach best when you have a relationship with the students,"
he said. "As I got older, I felt more distant to my undergraduate
students."
Mark was more in his element on stage with his flute than in the classroom
with his students. "Even in the classroom, I felt I was more of a
performer than a teacher," he said. Then, about three years ago,
two events changed the course of his personal and professional life. Mark's
marriage of 12 years came to an end, at a time when he had just begun
working with the University's newest population--doctoral students. "I
used work to keep myself from depression," he said.
An accomplished flutist with five CDs to his credit at the time, Mark
immersed himself in his music, recording three more jazz CDs in two years.
But it is his work with doctoral students that he has found most rewarding.
"It's been intellectually challenging and has reawakened my interest
in deep theory," he said."That's right, I'm back into deep theory.
Playing the flute is so stressful," he joked, "that I do logic
to relax."
As mentor to students in the Ed.D. in pedagogy program, Mark faces a new
set of challenges. "I find that helping these students do their best
is 90 percent psychological and 10 percent intellectual," he said.
"And as I've confronted that challenge I've drawn on my own dissertation
writing experience."
That process led Mark to revisit his dissertation, which is based on a
mathematical model of ontology. "I looked at it through the perspective
of the work I've been doing for the past 15 years," he said. "Natural
reasoning requires a different model of truth than the one that grounds
formal logic. I began to see the value of what I wrote, and came up with
a new computational model for truth that may apply to artificial intelligence."
Others see the value as well. His work has been published in Philosophica
by the University of Ghent, and this summer he will present his theory
at a conference on artificial intelligence at the University of Pavia
in Milan, Italy. "It's exciting to be presenting and working with
people in the field," he said.
Mark says the younger faculty members who have joined the department have
added to his new spirit. "They also have rejuvenated me," he
said. "I've become interested again in statistical foundations of
empirical research and have found intellectual stimulation that I hadn't
had in years."
Mark has served on about six dissertation committees and teaches Graduate
School courses including Access to Knowledge, Philosophy of Language and
Methods of Research. And while some nights he may not arrive home from
teaching until 11 p.m., he’ll stay up until 2 a.m. practicing flute,
the instrument he took up in 1974 to relieve the stress from writing his
dissertation.
The phone rings and Mark takes the call. "Don't worry," he reassures the panicked voice on the other end of the line. "No one is going to kill your data." He glances over his desk with a smile that exudes a sense of purpose. Clearly for some students, Mark has become the flute.
(To read more about Weinstein's musical projects and see photos of his performances, go to www.jazzfluteweinstein.com.)
Is there a colleague you'd like to nominate for "On the Job?" If so, e-mail his/her name along with a brief description of how he/she contributes to the campus community, to Jennifer Fusco at fuscoj@mail.montclair.edu.