* Columbia Pacific University PhD Enjoys Distinguished Academic Career
by Donald Burleson, PhD
In 1983 I was fulltime Professor, teaching in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Rivier College in New Hampshire, but had also for many years been active in literary research; I had received an M.A. in English at Rivier before coming to work there, and had an M.S. in mathematics from Midwestern State University in Texas. I was writing and publishing many articles of literary criticism, as well as short stories and a number of books on various subjects, and upon hearing of Columbia Pacific University’s doctoral programs (I honestly don’t recall where I first heard of CPU), I decided it was time to “get the mileage� for the work I was already doing and planning to continue to do, so I entered the doctoral program, pursuing the Ph.D. in English literature. By 1986 I had completed all degree requirements and had submitted my dissertation H. P. Lovecraft: A Critical Study, which, by the way, was published by Greenwood Press as part of a critical series on science fiction and fantasy authors.
Upon receiving my doctorate degree in 1986, I found, initially, that the administration at Rivier College was reluctant to recognize its worth. Rivier was operating under the aegis of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, perhaps the most conservative of all the regional accrediting bodies, and in the 1980s “distance education� (a designation not invented till later) was pretty much a heresy in traditional academic circles. (CPU was many years ahead of its time, and like nearly all pioneers and trailblazers, ended up being ill-treated for its farsightedness.) I contended with the administration over this for quite some time, but at length when CPU won its institution-wide approval status from the state of California and when I showed my administrators the paperwork, they accepted the degree, listed it by my name in the college catalog, and promoted me to full Professor. An earned, acceptable doctorate is an absolute requirement, at Rivier, for promotion to that highest academic rank, and my degree made it a reality.
In 1996 my wife Mollie and I moved to Roswell, New Mexico and in 1997 I joined the faculty at Eastern New Mexico University / Roswell, as director of one of our computer labs. (I am resigning from that position in August 2005 to accept a new faculty position in the Math Department, as I wish to return to teaching per se. I am being hired with tenure, as I achieved tenure in my earlier position here.) My doctorate has placed me well on the faculty salary schedule here at ENMU-R and enjoys the respect due any such earned degree.
I believe it is ever clearer with the passage of time that Columbia Pacific University was and is a true leader in the best pioneering spirit. In the years between the 1980s and now, all of higher education—with its complete online degrees, its University of Phoenix-type programs, and the like—has proceeded in a direction that shows that CPU, with its then avant-garde degree programs, was conceptually “right on the money� to start with, many years before popular trends would bear this out. Nowadays, any university that does not offer “distance learning� is considered backward and unaccommodating, and the irony is that these were the very qualities that made CPU scary to many traditionalists a few decades ago. Let the record show who the pioneers really were!
Donald R. Burleson, Ph.D.