I earned my Bachelor’s degree in general studies at Shimer College in 1990, and my Master’s and Ph.D. in philosophy at Duquesne University in 1999. While earning my graduate degrees I taught at several schools in Pittsburgh and central Florida.

In the fall of 2000, I was appointed an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Detroit Mercy. Over the next twenty-five years I regularly taught introductory philosophy, critical thinking and logic, ethics, person and society, social and political philosophy, and existentialism. I also taught thematic courses on friendship, the good life, appearance and reality, and have directed readings on Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche, phenomenology, continental philosophy, postmodernism, and seminars on phenomenologies of place, dwelling, and permanence. Detroit Mercy awarded me Emeritus status in May 2025.

My scholarly research has centered on the phenomenological method and the problem of expression, and I have published articles on Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre. I remain interested in the actual practice of phenomenology, and have undertaken several investigations of the experience of media, lived space, and the body. I still occasionally teach a masters seminar in phenomenology and architecture, and an upper-division undergraduate course in visuality and the new media.