Inside Higher Education with a Non-Traditional Educator

Dr Tom Brady earned his PhD in Plastic Material Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1972 and spent his career in the packaging industry where he and his colleagues developed and commercialized the very first PET plastic containers for carbonated beverages, and for food and personal care products. Tom's company, Plastic Technologies, Inc. and PTI's subsidiary company, Phoenix Technologies LLC also developed and commercialized the first successful plastic recycling process that could qualify recycled PET to be reused in direct food contact applications. Tom's industrial career is summarized in 4 previous books that were also published by BookBaby and which are also available at Amazon and at most conventional booksellers. However, Tom has also always had a passion for education and he and his wife, Betsy, have spent their entire adult lives supporting both K12 and higher education. Tom is not a traditional academic educator, but his mother, his 2 sisters, and several aunts and uncles spent their careers as trained K12 teachers and his grandfather, Dr. Jesse L. Ward, founded the College of Secondary Education at the University of Toledo back in 1927. During his career industrial Tom has served several terms on the Boards of Trustees for both Lourdes University and for the University of Toledo, and he has also served and still serves on many university and college advisory boards for the colleges of engineering, education, arts and letters, and for several university presidents. While all that experience certainly did not qualify Tom as a teacher or educator, in 2009 when Tom was still serving on the Board of Trustees for the University of Toledo, the President of the University, Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, offered Tom the opportunity to serve as Interim Dean for the Judith Herb College of Education. In this book, "Inside Higher Education with a Nontraditional Educator", several of the longtime distinguished faculty members of that College as well as Judith Herb, the Judith Herb College of Education's namesake, tell the story of how Tom walked into the College of Education where 100% of the faculty did not want him there and how over his 2-1/2 year tenure he and the faculty together established a very close and mutually supportive relationship and how they worked together to successfully elevate the stature and position of the University of Toledo's Judith Herb College of Education in the educational community. Tom's reason for writing this book is not so much to tell his own story as it is to share his message, which is that collaboration between colleges of education that are training teachers to prepare students for the business and industrial world that those students will enter, and professionals who live and work in that business and industrial world, can have a very positive impact on both the students being prepared for the teaching profession and ultimately on the students that those teachers prepare for the business and industrial world.