- Home
- Admissions
- Interested?
- CRAM
- Professors
CRAM 2009 Professor Biographies
Dr. Mark Cosgrove
Two-time professor of the year, Dr. Mark Cosgrove, is a psychology professor and department chair. His most recent book, Foundations of Christian Thought (Kregel Publications, 2006), is used as one of the textbooks for the course.
Dr. Steve Baarendse
Steve grew up as a TEAM missionary kid in Vienna, Austria. For birthdays he asked for two things-a soccer ball or a book. He attended the Taylor summer honors program as a high school student, and went on to study English and art at Taylor under its new president, Jay Kesler (1986-1990). After completing graduate degrees at Indiana University in comparative literature and art history, he taught at Black Forest Academy in Germany, where he lived in a dorm with 40 boys, coached soccer, and met his wife Sara. Steve currently teaches English and humanities at Columbia International University in South Carolina. His passion is to challenge students to read and to think "Christianly" about all of culture, and he still loves a good soccer game.
Dr. James Spiegel
Philosophy professor Dr. James Spiegel joined the Taylor University faculty in 1993. Between then and now he married his wife, Amy, has had 3 children, has taught many campus members to play a game he calls Angle Ball, coaches the Ethics Bowl Team, plays with a band, and writes a little when he gets a chance.
Acutally, Spiegel's book, How to be Good in a World Gone Bad, has received an Award of Merit in the category of Spirituality for the 2005 Christianity Today Book Awards. The book, released last year by Kregel Publications of Grand Rapids, MI, is a follow-up to his earlier book Hypocrisy.
Spiegel has also published over 20 articles, refereed for several philosophical journals, and served as editor of the Berkeley Briefs, the newsletter for the International Berkeley Society.
We have asked Dr. Spiegel if he would join Dr. Steve Baarendse for the round table discussion.
Dr. Thomas Jones
Dr. Thomas Jones, Dean of Arts & Sciences, is also an associate professor of history. His special areas of scholarship include American political and diplomatic history and social studies education. He continues to coordinate the social studies program for secondary teacher education candidates and is a longtime member of the board for the Geography Educators' Network of Indiana (GENI), which he serves as the vice president. He also participates as an active member of the Conference on Faith & History and has presented at their conferences. Dr. Jones has also served on several social studies education consulting projects for the Indiana Department of Education. He has been selected as the university's Distinguished Professor twice (1993 & 2004) during his eighteen years as a full-time member of the faculty. In addition, Dr. Jones has been the minister of Center Christian Church for more than 35 years. He and his wife, Carolyn, have two children: Stephen is a 2000 TU grad in history and is completing the MA in history at George Mason University (Fairfax, VA) and Bethany is a junior psychology major with an interest in forensic psychology and will be studying in Ireland during the spring of 2007.
Dr. Matt DeLong
Mathematics professor Dr. Matt DeLong has taught at Taylor University since receiving his doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1998. At Taylor he has taught numerous mathematics courses, coached the Taylor Mathematics contest teams and supervised several student research projects.
Dr. DeLong is a 2005 recipient of the Mathematical Association of America's Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member. He has published over a dozen articles and one book on mathematics and mathematics education. Dr. DeLong is also the adult choir director at his church and the first tenor in the Taylor faculty quartet, Quadrivium.
Dr. DeLong's most rewarding, and at times exhausting, job is raising, along with his wife Bonnie, their three wonderful children.
