Paul Stephen Prueitt, PhD

 
 

 
Background: 
Paul Prueitt has a PhD (1988) in Pure and Applied mathematics and has published in areas related to cognitive engineering, knowledge science, informatics, neural models of behavior, educational theory, distance learning and applied mathematics. He has taught graduate courses at George Washington, including one in the Spring 2003 on Scientific Databases.  He has served on several doctoral committees, in engineering management, computer science and knowledge management.  He has taught over 30 courses at the community colleges and an additional 70 courses in universities or colleges. He has 18 hours of graduate work in Education (1985).  He is currently teaching a full schedule, four freshman courses, in computer science at Norwich University and working on private contracts in service oriented computing. 
 
His interests include educational issues, science and educational policy issues and educational access technology such as distance learning and collaborative knowledge management systems.   He has been an articulate speaker in many settings, including policy settings.  He is involved in policy discussions regarding the requirements specification of a national project to renew curriculums in mathematics and computer science.  A high school to college bridge curriculum in both computer science and mathematics has being developed and teaching pedagogy has been well tested.  

He has defined a demand side educational pedagogy, called the "lifting strategy".  The lifting strategy’s pedagogy is based on a cognitive-behavioral result derived from the study of neural and immune response systems.  The result conjectures that the development of tolerance effects students image of self (following the work by Bandura, and others, on social learning theory).  The result suggests that novelty in enhancement curriculum will evoke responsiveness; whereas the re-teaching of the same content may produce heightened frustration and even despair.  A draft of a book on this curriculum is in draft form.  His focus on computing theory and freshman information science will be integrated into this draft during the fall 2009 semester. 

The enhancement curriculum n mathematics has three focuses, elementary arithmetic taught in bases other then ten, foundations of set theory and the first elements of abstract algebra.  Experience from 2006-2008 shows that under-prepared freshman students do well in this curriculum and that the comprehension of theory and notation transfers to standard freshman mathematics coursework.  Student essays and work demonstrated this success.   

Education

 
Post Doc. Neuropsychology and Theory of Perception. Georgetown University 1990 - 1993
Ph.D. Applied Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas Arlington, 1988
M.A. Pure Mathematics, Southern Methodist University, 1980
B.A. Mathematics, University of Texas at Arlington, 1978
 
Professional Goals

 
He currently wishes to teach in those fields that he is well qualified to teach; collaborative systems, computer science, philosophy, informatics, and mathematics.  He wishes to serve interdisciplinary program development within the academic community.
 
His objective is to serve within respected college environments, to teach and to complete the several books.  He has spent a lifetime hoping to understand the biological processes that support life and awareness.  He would like very much to settle into a period of time where he would have the time  to participate in scholarly contemplation about the progress that has occurred during the past thirty years.  

Teaching experience
 
Dr. Prueitt has taught over 100 course sections including subjects in computer science, physics, mathematics and economics.  His teaching experience includes teaching part time at a number of community colleges, and at six universities or colleges.  In 1995 he left academia to work in the information technology and intelligence technology areas.  He has returned to academy in 2007 and would like to teach the foundations, history of mathematics, topology, number theory and introductory mathematics.  He has a strong interest in remedial and enhancement arithmetic and algebra programs and has developed a book having a curriculum design for remediation of acquired learning disability in arithmetic and algebra.  He has 18 hours of graduate work in education, and may teach education courses.  

Professional Experience
 
Dr. Prueitt has worked on retrieval technology, data modeling and database interface design and coding using Oracle, SQL Server, Access, FoxPro, VB, Objective C, parallel C, C, C# and C++. He has designed, prototyped and implemented scalable commercial software systems targeted at integrating retrieval technologies, transaction analysis, data mining and text/image technologies. For fifteen years, he has managed the efforts of small teams of programmers.  A book on knowledge management technology and capability is in manuscript form.  In 1991 – 1994 he was co-Director of the Neural Network Facility at Georgetown University with funding from MIT, Lincoln Labs and DARPA.  In 1999 – 2003 he was a Visiting Scholar attached to the Cyber Security Policy & Research Institute.  He has been engaged in policy briefings regarding computer science deployment within the federal government.

Work on the challenges facing underserved students


After the experiences within federal information technology circles (1991-2007) and due to some teaching experiences in the HBCU system, he focused on an effort (2007-2009) to gain additional understanding of the HBCU administration, faculty and students.  He meet students who once given a chance excelled, and administrations that were lacking in many of the qualities that one should be able to expect in a college.  This experience reinforced an underlying sense that student oriented pedagogy and curriculum, what I have begun to call “demand side education”, has considerable merit; particularly in under-served communities.  
 
Professional Associations

 
(2005)  Individual Member, OASIS Internal Standards Committee
(2001)  Founder of a knowledge systems consulting firm OntologyStream Inc.
(1997) Founder of the Behavioral Computational Neuroscience (BCN) Group, Inc. The BCN Group is a small, not for profit, scientific organization with a mission to aid scientific collaboration relating to machine and natural intelligence.
(1998) Member Knowledge Management Professional Society
(1997) Founding Member of Knowledge Management Professional Society
(1988) Member of INNS (International Neural Network Society)
(1986) Member American Mathematical Society
 

Employment History

 
Aug 2008- June 2009  Associate Professor of Mathematics (visiting), Lane College, Jackson Tennessee. Supervisor Division Chair Dr Jimmy Hwang
The Lifting Pedagogy methodology was used in teaching eight sections of freshman mathematics and two advanced courses.  Several program proposals were developed in conjunction with other professors of mathematics.  Two publications were submitted.  


Aug 2007 – June 2008 Chair and Associate Professor of Mathematics, Talladega College, 383 Battle Street,  Talladega Alabama.  Supervisor Academic Vice President, Dr Arthur Bacon
As chair of a small department, I structured a freshman mathematic program designed to bring student forward in an environment where many barriers existed.


Jan 2003 – Aug 2007: President of OntologyStream Inc
Development of business plans and infrastructure for an e-commerce system
Contract working on Service Oriented Architecture with application to Higher Education
Contracts with US Customs working on ontology mediated of threat analysis
Contracts with client working on service oriented architecture, web services and semantic extraction environments.
Contract with the FCC on document management, taxonomy design and development.
2001 - 2003: Adjunct Faculty in Computer Science at George Washington University.  Research Professor at Cyber Security Policy & Research Institute at George Washington University (Ashburn Campus)
·         Continuing the evaluation of the use of data mining, data visualization and decision support systems for the intelligence community, under contract to OntologyStream Inc.
·         Developing planning for a Federal Biodefense System
·         Working on a text book for liberal arts mathematics
·         Working on distance learning delivery systems
 
October 2002 – Jan 2003: Dr. Prueitt was the Senior Scientist at Object Sciences Corporation, located in Alexandria Virginia. 703-253-1106.
·         Developed patents in the area of latent semantic indexing and text understanding
·         Developed funding instruments for deployment of innovations into government agencies
·         Evaluated the use of data mining, data visualization and decision support systems for the intelligence community
 
May 2000 – October 2002: President of OntologyStream Inc.
·         Developed a database structure that provides knowledge management tools.
·         Worked on computer security architecture. He designed Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) architecture for a government client. Used AI and data aggregation methods to automate the development and population of taxonomy models of intrusion events. Developed Visual Basic software and ported part of this software to C#.
·         Provided evaluation of patent portfolio for more that one start-up company.
·         Created a conceptual framework and logical design for business architectures based on analytic in-memory database technologies using the Forth language.
·         Worked within virtual teams.
·         Documented a conceptual framework and logical design for a three-tier (Application Server based) information delivery system for Acappella Software Inc.
·         Worked on business development issues and interacted with the various client company board members.
 
February 2000 – May 2000: Wizdom Systems Inc. is an established Business Process Re-engineering firm with offices in Alexandria, VA. Title: Consultant on Knowledge Management Project for Office of Secretary of Defense.
·         Developed an evaluative architecture for synthesizing best practices and lessons learned from large-scale Knowledge Management activities in government agencies.
·         Interfaced with Office of Secretary of Defense on advanced technology issues
·         Worked in a non-classified role within the political environment of the US policy environment.
·         Business Development.
 
May 1999 – January 2000. GMA Industries is a provider of subcontracting services to the US government. Title: Senior Member of the Technical Staff.
·         Designed and built a parallel implementation of data compression including Huffman, Rice and LZ algorithms.
·         He developed original design for interactive mammography understanding system (coded) based on fractal compression/decompression and associative memories.
 
October 1998 - April, 1999. NetBase Corporation is a provider of system integration services in Chantilly Virginia. Title: Senior Scientist
·         Developed adaptive retrieval technology as part of a contract to the State Department involving a prototype distance learning system.  This prototype was one of the most advanced system in the world at that time.
·         August, 1998 – January 1999. (Part Time) Declassification Productivity Research Center (DPRC) at George Washington University. Title: Executive Research Fellow
·         Duties included advice to CIA, NSA and DOE Offices of Declassification regarding architecture for image and text understanding.
·         He designed and prototyped a full text knowledge management system for scientific collaboration using HTML and Oracle ConText. Worked with a distributed community of about 100 individuals.
 
May 1995 – October 1998: Highland Technologies is a document management software company and system integrator in Lanham Maryland. Title: Senior Scientist
·         Duties were to design and code retrieval systems using natural language processors, artificial intelligence, logic and original algorithms.
·         Configured COTS systems and workflow using an Oracle database.
·         He designed and prototyped a system for redaction assistance during government declassification of documents.
·         Supervised several programmers and a specialist in Russian logic.
·         Traveled to Russia to discuss situational logics with Russian scientists.
·         Invented a full text routing and retrieval algorithm (published in 1998).
·         Designed, prototyped, and managed the coding of a high volume transaction system for trouble ticket analysis for a large telecommunication corporation.
 
May 1994 – May 1995: Senior Programmer at JWK International Corporation in Annandale Virginia. Title: Senior Programmer
·         Manage a team of three professional nutritionists and a team of three FoxPro programmers in the development of an automated dietary assessment interface.
·         Business development.
 
August 1993 – May 1994: Saint Paul’s College in South Hill Virginia. Title: Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science
·         Taught and researched the remedial teaching of mathematics.
·         Developed grant proposals.
·         Made scholarly presentations at two conferences (quantum neurodynamics).
 
May 1990 – August 1993: Physics Department, Georgetown University in Washington D.C. Title: Research Assistant Professor
·         Co-Director of the Neural Network Research Facility.
·         Received a National Science Foundation grant in support of a national conference on biological signal process and cognition.
·         Received contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the area of distributed intelligence and quantum-neuropsychology.
·         Interacted with program managers at DARPA and NSF and with an extended scientific community.
·         Funded by NSF to develop original work on computational models of human / computer interactions in Objective C.
·         Developed parallel computation of original models of learning using a network of Next Computers, a SUN (UNIX) computer, and transputers.
·         Used object classes to model concurrent processes, communications between concurrent processes using transputers.
·         Developed multi-university consortium proposals to DARPA on collaborative technologies.
 
August 1988 – May 1990: Hampton University in Hampton Virginia. Title: Assistant Professor of Mathematics
·         Worked on a contract for Naval Surface Warfare Center using NeXT computers.
·         Developed a Fortran simulator of artificial neural network architectures
 
Previous to 1988: PhD work on mathematical models of learning in biological systems.
 
Publications
 
Dr Prueitt has published just under thirty referred web articles, journal articles or book chapters.  He has extensively published into a web log that he started in the mid 1990s, and has draft materials for several books.