About Me
Intro to Doc Sweeney’s Blog
I started teaching online classes for the University of Maryland at the beginning of this century as a side gig to my position as a Professor at Hillsdale College. At the time U of M had a contract with the military to teach service members. Their people taught face-to-face classes at military installations all over the world. When online teaching became feasible they jumped into it big time. They developed one of the first online teaching software systems that they used exclusively for their own classes.
I taught a Master’s level finance class. The majority of my students were either active duty military or spouses. It was not unusual for me to have students who were stationed in combat zones.
You must understand that this was before Instagram or Facebook or any other social media. I created some videos to help my students learn the material. Since this was before YouTube I begged Hillsdale’s IT department for server space.
There was no way for me to socially engage with my students as I did with my face-to-face Hillsdale students. So I started writing a blog (I don’t think the term existed yet), writing about things going on locally with me, my family and our town.
I called the social area in my online classes “Sweeney’s Irish Pub and Coffee Shop”. I would introduce myself and ask my students to do the same. I also asked them to name their favorite beverage. If they performed particularly well on a given task I would reward them with a virtual beverage.
There was quite a bit of activity in the Pub. So much so that students asked if they could continue with online socializing after class was over. I set up a web site called “Sweeney’s Next Door”, which was the beginning of what you see now. Due to technical difficulties I changed from a web site to a List-serve called Gaggle Mail, which I used for over a decade. Setting up a new web page for my blog was on my “to do list” for years. What you are seeing now is a rather simple web site that I finally set up. I hope to make some improvements as time goes on.
I stopped teaching online for the University of Maryland around 2017 and I retired from Hillsdale in December of 2021.
I spend my time volunteering as Assistant Coach for the Hillsdale Action Shooting Team and as the hurdle coach at Jonesville High School. I also help out occasionally at Saucy Dog’s BBQ, which our son, Michael, owns. I’ve been married to Susan, the love of my life, since 1986. And I take our Golden Retriever, Tully, for his daily morning walks.
For you new people: It would be nice if you introduced yourself to the group, telling a little about yourself and how you know me. Hopefully I’ll have the site set up to allow this
Welcome to my blog. Hope you enjoy it.
Doc