User:PMAOpus

Who Am I?
I am a Lutheran pastor residing in Massachusetts (USA). My real name is Aaron. I'm just beginning to explore Wikiversity right now, but I love the idea of open-access learning.

Wikiwha??
I've gotten pretty active on the Latin Wikisource in the last month, working on tidying things up a bit and adding some texts, particularly Biblical exegetical texts from medieval authors.

Interests and "Expertise"
I'd like to get involved in the School of Theology here on Wikiversity, since it's of course my primary area of expertise in my worklife. To be clear, I bring to this a Point of View of mainline, progressive Christianity. That said, I do think it's important to hold this PoV in tension with the fundamentalist movement that's grown up particularly in modern, English-speaking cultures. I don't hold to fundamentalist beliefs, but I do think there's a great deal that these two species of modern Christianity can learn from one another. I'm fascinated by languages, too. I'm particularly struck by some of the ideas floating around revisiting inductive learning and teaching dead languages as if they were alive. I'd love to get into some teaching materials for: I have both worked and taught in the field of business computing, serving as a midrange systems administrator for a multinational corporation and as a college professor in software development. It's hardly my forté anymore, but I might go poking around the IT areas of the site with iSeries development on the brain.
 * I can imagine putting together some learning resources on Lutheranism geared toward youth, since I do a lot of work teaching Confirmation classes.
 * I also have particular interests in Biblical Exegesis--especially in Old (Hebrew) Testament--using the Historical-Critical method, getting at the Hebrew language, investigating now-forgotten medieval views, and exploring Jewish midrash and modern contextual interpretation.
 * Biblical/Ancient Hebrew
 * Spanish
 * Latin

And I have that old bit of music studies in me that yearns to get out. One can hardly learn to play the clarinet or bassoon online, but I do have all that old work on Mozart operas and on the symphonic movement that's dying to be used.

Education
These things don't matter much around here, of course, and rightly so. But I do have some credentials which help to inform what I'm putting together here. And I have other coursework in: What can I say? I like learning an awful lot. I'm eager to go get my Ph.D., if I can ever hammer down my interests to something that can work into a decent statement of purpose.
 * Master of Divinity from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, with additional Certificate in Biblical Studies
 * B.S. in Information Technology from Albright College
 * A.A.S. in Business/Computer Programming from Reading Area Community College
 * Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts
 * Music from Alma College