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John Bear

For circle dance information, click on the underlined word "Dance" just below.

DANCE

Resumé

B.A., Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 1959
M.J., Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, 1960 [Grade point average: 4.0]
Ph.D., Communication, Michigan State University, 1966 [Grade point average: 4.0]

Author of 35 books with major publishers (Time-Life, McGraw-Hill, Career Press, Harcourt Brace, Grosset & Dunlap, Ten Speed Press, Price/Stern/Sloan) on higher education, computers, travel, U.S. history, cooking, publishing, and consumerism. Four titles have appeared on various bestseller lists.

In the business world I was, most recently, Head of New Business Development for the Financial Times division of Pearson PLC, the world's largest educational publisher (Prentice Hall, Addison Wesley Longmans, Scott Foresman, Penguin, Putnam, etc.).

Pearson purchased the company my wife and I founded and ran for seven years, International Business Education, Inc., which did marketing in North America for two large British universities, the University of Leicester and Heriot-Watt University (which ultimately had the largest MBA program of any kind in the United States and Canada).

In earlier times, I was Director of the Center for the Gifted Child in San Francisco, Research Director for the Bell & Howell Company's educational division in Chicago, Head of Advertising and Corporate Communications for the Midas Muffler Company (Midas-International) in Chicago, and Associate Professor (with tenure) in the University of Iowa School of Journalism, and head of the Senior Honors Program.

My consulting clients have included the F.B.I. (degrees and credentials), the Grateful Dead (marketing and financial planning), General Motors (safety programs), Xerox Corporation (product development), and Encyclopaedia Britannica (product development). I have also consulted with more than 2,000 individuals and a dozen universities, on matters related to earning or marketing degrees. 

I have also had involvements with three unaccredited institutions. More than 25 years ago, I consulted in the start-up of Columbia Pacific University, founded by two men with impeccable credentials: a Harvard M.D. psychiatrist, and the former president of three regionally-accredited universities. Columbia Pacific was a state-approved university, with more than 30 full-time employees, whose graduates qualified to take the state psychology and other licensing exams. My involvement ended more than 25 years ago. In 1986, I was very briefly involved in the planning for Fairfax University, but resigned less than two months after it was registered in Louisiana, before any students had enrolled. And in 1990-91, while living in Hilo, Hawaii, I was the full-time president of Greenwich University, which incorporated the non-profit International Institute for Advanced Studies (founded in 1972 in Missouri).

A door; Actual size=180 pixels wide

John Bear

I live in a San Francisco suburb with my wife, Marina, an author and community college teacher (ethics, bioethics, world religion), and our Wheaten terrier, Luiseagh ("Lucy"). Hobbies include folk dancing (the form called circle dance), magic (I have been initiated into the Society of American Magicians), and an imminent return to tennis, and the prospect of building a model train layout ("N") and starting bagpipe lessons.

Daughter/co-author Mariah is executive editor at the San Francisco office of a large British publishing company. Our twins, Susannah (a registered nurse) and Tanya, live in Oregon with their husbands and our five grandchildren.

John Bear
john.bear@mac.com
Fax (510) 528-4254
853 Shevlin Drive
El Cerrito, California 94530 USA