Biography - Michael King

I am so delighted and inspired to be a member of the APUS community; to be able to fully utilize all the talents with which I have been so richly blessed. My passion comes from being able to direct and empower those on their journey to academic and career fulfillment. I look forward to sharing my experiences, sensitivities and insights. Please always feel free to enlist my support, enthusiasm and boundless energy as your APUS online advocate.

Most of my work in education has been spent at the California community college level as an Associate Professor/Program Coordinator of African Studies, 1973 to 1985, and an Academic Advisor from 1985 to 1997. At UCLA, I earned a BA in History, and a MA in African Area Studies. During my senior year at UCLA, I was honored to be a participant in UCLA's Education Abroad Program. I studied as an exchange student at the University of Ghana, West Africa. That year, I traveled to over twenty countries in Africa including Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Nigeria, Zaire, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. I have continued my travels to such places as Scandinavia, the Soviet Union, Western Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East including Israel, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Brazil, and Peru. During my summer 1976 USSR visit, I resided with a Soviet communist party family, in the Volga River auto manufacturing city of Togliatti. As a result of my work with the US/American-Soviet Friendship Society, I sponsored a delegation of Soviet professionals and educators on a tour of San Diego, promoting glasnost in the early 1980s.

My students and advisees tend to be a very diverse and international group, coming from such places as Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America as well as US communities. I have promoted many cross-cultural events throughout the years to celebrate and promote diversity. In the early 1990s, I organized a San Diego area book campaign for needy South African schools which resulted in the donation of twenty-five tons of textbooks; all were subsequently shipped to the predominantly black University of the North in Pietersberg, South Africa. This was in response to my educational fact-finding visit to South Africa in May 1990, sponsored by the Southern Africa Forum.

In 1985, as an adult distance learner, I earned a second MA degree in Academic Advising from Vermont College of Norwich University. In 2001, I was awarded a graduate certificate in TESOL from United States International University, in San Diego. Much of the 1990s found me volunteering my time and talents in the non-profit sector, advocating for those in our community in the most critical need of educational and employment/career guidance. During the 2001 – 2002 academic year, I took a position as an Academic Advisor to Arabian Gulf students for the government of the United Arab Emirates. The focus was to assist them in transitioning to top universities in the US and the United Kingdom. I was each student's point of contact between the UAE government and the US and the UK immigration and university officials. Students attended such institutions as Harvard, Vanderbilt and MIT.
I look forward to getting to know each of my students, as well as faculty, staff and administrators. I am excited to be an instrumental part of what makes the APUS experience both stimulating and rewarding.

Warmly,

Michael King