Dr. Myron Orleans

Myron Orleans...proud father, grandfather, scholar and adjunct online instructor for CSUStan.

I was raised in the Bronx NY in the shadow of Yankee Stadium near the Grand Concourse. I played ball on the streets and learned about community life, gangs and violence early on.

Primary school was a pain for me. There were no books in my house and, quite honestly, my household was non-literate. I was taken out of my 4th grade class for special instruction because I could not read. I still feel to this day the stifling humidity of that tiny, closeted room. Finally, receiving some attention by a patient but forgotten special ed teacher, I learned to read and boy! did I love it. I hit the local library and just went through the shelves reading nearly all the books available to a kid regardless of content.

The library though was in the West Bronx and I was from the South Bronx. It was a long walk through all sorts of ethnic neighborhoods. I learned the characteristics of the cultural areas very well and loved exploring beyond familiar streets. I saw what made up a city.

I was not a particularly gifted or disciplined student. While other kids were enjoying the high school experience, I was reading widely, listening to music, going to the opera, ballet and seeing Broadway musical shows, but did not get very high grades.

I did take on the role of street counselor to my buddies, dispensing tidbits of wisdom drawn from reading Balzac, Stendahl, Dickens, Freud, Aldous Huxley and so forth. I honestly don't know how many of these guys ever recovered from my advice.

I enrolled in The City College of New York (CCNY) and took sociology, psychology and philosophy classes without any particular direction. Then, one day a realization struck me--I wanted to do what my fine professors were doing. I wanted to read, express my understandings, study the world, help people out, and be relevant to the world while analyzing it.

I found my way into graduate school in sociology (The New School University) and eventually received my doctorate. I started teaching when I was very young. I was forever a dissenter from established ways, protesting war, oppression, greed and all bad things, while always maintaining ethical neutrality in my academic work. I studied everyday behavior as co-editor of a once popular academic journal (Journal of Mundane Behavior) and worked for years with variant persons as an alcohol/drug counselor and prison instructor.

I'm proud to have had some success in publishing and presenting Scholarly Products Myron Orleans February 2010.pdf in areas such as family, theory, friendship, computer-human interface, and most recently on online instruction and Alzheimer’s. I have always loved teaching sociology. I feel that I have benefited many of my students as a caring, dedicated, experienced university professor.