Dr. Mike Sosteric | The Real Story

Start from the bottom and read backwards.

If you want to contact me, otherwise….

• Did an internal presentation for Athabasca University outlining the pedagogy and theory behind The Socjourn, and how it can be used to attract students, expand enrollments, and provide a sophisticated online educational experience for students at AU.
•  Attributed enrollment increases in large measure to the success of The Socjourn, where AU Sociology courses are sampled and promoted.
• Watched while enrollments in Athabasca University Sociology 287 and 288 (the 6-credit introductory Sociology course) rose by 60% in the course of a single year (ya, that’s right) with a consequent increase in “down stream” enrollments.
• Wrote the second most popular article on Socjourn, just behind the first most popular article.
• Wrote a bunch of articles for The Socjourn to help set the tone, and develop the channel.
• Founded The Socjourn, an online Sociology resource.
• Put the EJS into abatement.
• Resolved to transform scholarly communication.
• Published it in EJS.
• Submitted it to some peer reviewed journals whose journal editors admitted to being to afraid to publish it.
• Wrote an interesting article expounding on consciousness, mysticism, and science (The Death of Newton).
• Helped repair/rebuild/expand the Sociology program.
• Moved into the Center for Global and Social Analysis.
• Decided to let the experts write software.
• Wrote some more web software, helped found Scholarly Exchange, got bored, annoyed the co-owners, got kicked out, left.
• Wrote a bunch of too-boring-to-mention peer reviewed journal articles on technology.
• Tenure decision overturned by then university president Dominic Abrioux presumably because he was so impressed with the work I was doing that he felt I should get tenure despite the fact that some people in the university didn’t like the way I did things.
• Was denied tenure in committee because I was not “collegial” enough.
• Applied for Tenure
• Helped found even more scholarly electronic journals
• Wrote the software for, and then published on my own server, the Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences
• Wrote a Mysql Admin interface in PHP (defunct).
• Wrote some conference software in Perl.
• Impressed the Vice President Academic so much that he created a full time, tenure track, position just for little old me.
• Founded ICAAP (International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication) (Wikipedia)
• Founded more Sociology journals.
• Learned about all the things you could do with a computer if you understood Linus Torvalds.
• Loved the power of the “command line.”
• Got my own Unix server
• Got a sessional job at Athabasca University, Canada’s premier online institution of higher education.
• Got a PhD
• Defended it in “record” time (shortest thesis defense ever, I was subsequently told).
• Finished my dissertation
• Wrote a “top ten” article for Work, Employment, and Society, a premier Sociological journal. Did this before even starting on my graduated dissertation.
• Ignored him and continued to work on The Electronic Journal of Sociology (EJS).
• Was told by a Dr. Nico Stehr, through my assistant at the time(!?), that “graduate students didn’t start scholarly journals” and that therefore I should just focus on my studies and “be good” like all the other graduate students. (I’m paraphrasing, since “he” never lowered himself to actually speak directly to me).
• Started the very first electronic journal of Sociology, peer reviewed, open access, and free, also one of the very first online scholarly resources. (Wikipedia)
• Witnessed the birth of the World Wide Web
• Entered a PhD program at the University of Alberta
• Graduated with an M.A. in Sociology
• Entered a Master’s program at the University of Regina in Sociology
• Graduated with a double major, high honours Sociology, honours Psychology
• Met Duncan Blewett (R.I.P.), 1950s LSD researcher extraordinaire
• Undaunted, re-entered university as a Psychology major.
• Failed 100% of my courses, was required to discontinue (RTD), logged an epic fail.
• Graduated High school and entered University of Regina to study engineering
• And so on… Until I
• Skipped as many of my grade two classes as I could because of the abuse from the teachers and from fellow students…
• Skipped out of as many of my grade one classes as I could because I hated school and the misery associated with it.
• Enrolled in Kindergarten and wept while my mother abandoned me to “the system”