BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCH:
I was born in Gary, Indiana in 1965. When I was four years old, my family moved to the small mountain town of Granby, Colorado where I lived until graduating from Middle Park Senior High School in
1983. I then returned to Indiana to attend DePauw University and graduated in
1987 with a B.A. in Biology. In 1991, I received a Ph.D. in mammalian
physiology from the Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology at Purdue University. My doctoral research project involved studying the initiators of lipid
peroxidation in liver tissue due to oxidative stress during reperfusion or
following trauma.
After graduate school, I moved to St. Louis, Missouri to take a position
as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Cardiology at Washington
University School of Medicine. For two years, I investigated ways to attenuate
ischemia/reperfusion injury in the heart via the modulation of anaerobic
glycolysis. In 1993, I began teaching biology courses at various campuses in
the St. Louis area. That same year, I married Sheryl at St. Nicholas Greek
Orthodox Church in St. Louis, MO. In 1995, we moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where I taught biology at St. Joseph's University.
In 1997, as a result of a personal journey that began several years
earlier, I began work on a Master of Divinity degree at St. Vladimir's Orthodox
Christian Theological Seminary in Crestwood, NY. While in seminary, I
continued teaching biology part-time at local colleges. My M.Div. thesis
examined the eucharistic typology of Hannah's sacrifice in the Septuagint
version of I Samuel 1:24. After graduating cum laude from seminary, I
was ordained as a deacon and then, on July 9, 2000, I was ordained to the Holy
Priesthood.
For the next five years, I served as the part-time pastor of St. George
Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church in Albany, NY. At the same time I worked as
a visiting assistant professor of biology at the College of Mt. St. Vincent in Riverdale, NY. In 2003, I joined the faculty of Concordia College in Bronxville, NY as an assistant professor of biology. There I was promoted to Associate Professor. During
my years as a professor, I received awards for working with both physically challenged
and minority students. In the summer of 2005, I “retired” from teaching in
order to pursue full-time ministry. I was assigned to be the first full-time
priest of All Saints of North America Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church (a
mission parish started in 2003) in St. Louis, Missouri.
I have one daughter, three cats, and a horse (actually, it’s my wife’s and
daughter’s horse). I have numerous publications in both scientific and
theological journals. My hobbies include studying theology (scriptural
interpretation, liturgical theology, and the early Church Fathers are my
favorite topics), science fiction (Star Trek, Doctor Who, the original
Battlestar Galactica, etc.), music, reading, toy collecting, hiking, fossil
hunting, painting, and model railroading.
