David Churchman

He retired to Oregon in 2003, where he is a member of the Oregon Selective Service Board and Rotary International and continues to write, and to volunteer for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and local Community Emergency Response Team.

While at California State University, with two others he expanded his course on negotiations into one of the first graduate degrees in the country in Conflict Management in 1982, chairing it until retiring in 2003. Seven years later, working with the campus Director of distance learning he again broke new ground by combining interactive television and the Internet to make the degree accessible worldwide, enabling his department to produce 10% of all degrees awarded by the university with 2% of the faculty budget. In addition, he helped to initiate the California Academy of Mathematics and Science and to design and initiate a degree in Travel and Tourism, and updated the masters program in gerontology. In 1982, after an apprenticeship as a movie exotic animal trainer working primarily with big cats, elephants, and raptors, he co-founded Wildlife on Wheels with Millicent Wood, which presented live wild animal environmental education programs to approximately 100,000 children each year in the Los Angeles basin, did rescue work on oiled seabirds after some three-dozen oil spills including Exxon Valdez, and occasionally provided animals for television and movies.

David Churchman (born 1938) is a California State University Professor and Chairman Emeritus of Behavioral Science and Professor of Humanities recognized for numerous educational innovations.