David Churchman

David Churchman (born 1938) is a California State University Professor and Chairman Emeritus of Behavioral Science and Professor of Humanities recognized for numerous educational innovations.

Biography

Raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Michigan and his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles. Before accepting the appointment at California State University, he served as an infantry lieutenant, social worker, high school teacher, research associate at University of Southern California, and program officer at National Science Foundation. He has lived in or traveled to over 100 countries as an educator, researcher, or tourist. He taught in Morocco, received a doctoral fellowship from the U.S. Department of State and has been a Fulbright Scholar in Cyprus and Ukraine and a Malone Scholar in Saudi Arabia, conducted research on zoo visitors in Australia and Singapore. He is married to Altantsetseg Agvandorj, originally from Mongolia.

While teaching in Pennsylvania, he developed an eleventh-grade curriculum that integrated topics across all subjects. While at UCLA, working with non-profit Tribal American Corporation, he designed a preschool curriculum that used characteristics of American Indian culture to teach basic skills and devised the evaluation system for National Drug Abuse Training Center. While at USC he was on the team that created the Emmy-winning PBS-TV program, Freestyle, which encouraged young girls to study mathematics and science.

While at California State University, he initiated the first graduate degree in the country in Conflict Management in 1982. Ten years later, he again broke new ground by combining interactive television and the Internet to make the degree accessible worldwide, enabling his department to produce 10% of all degrees awarded by the university with 2% of the faculty budget. In addition, he helped to initiate the California Academy of Mathematics and Science and to design and initiate a degree in Travel and Tourism, and modernized the masters program in gerontology. In 1982 with Millicent Wood-Harris he co-founded Wildlife on Wheels, which presents live wild animal environmental education programs to approximately 100,000 children each year in the Los Angeles basin. He is a founding director of Birute Galdikas’ Orangutan Foundation and was the environmental representative on the California Citizens’ Advisory Panel of the Bureau of Land Management. For a dozen years, he wrote a bi-monthly column on theoretical and applied military problems for Fire and Movement under the pseudonym of the Armchair General. He is the author or co-author of over 150 papers, articles, chapters, and books, and of over $6 million in successful grant proposals.