A.B., Amherst College M.S., Old Dominion University D.Sc., Washington University, St. Louis
Tom Fuller taught math and physics in public high schools in Portsmouth, Virginia, for four years. He held several marketing and training positions at Burroughs Corporation. For three years, he managed product development for two divisions of The Christian Science Publishing Society and was the Concord Project Manager. He has taught math and computer science since 1989 at Principia College. He has served the college as faculty president and unit head of the math and natural sciences division.
Tom is a Fellow of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS). He is certified in data processing by the Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals. He has served on APICS' national Curricula and Certification Council, and led the Japanese Manufacturing Study Mission in investigating a wide variety of successful Japanese manufacturers.
Tom has written articles for the Christian Science Journal and Sentinel. He has published about two dozen articles in various professional journals, a few books and booklets, and spoken in many cities in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan. He has done corporate training and consulting in the United States and in Europe.
Member of:
Sigma Xi
American Production and Inventory Control Society (Fellow)
Choice of academic field:
I loved math ever since my fourth grade teacher told me that I was good at it. I learned to use a computer in the '60s to do my physics homework and have been playing with them ever since.
Why I feel my field is essential for students:
Four reasons (in increasing order of importance).
Freer career choices
Initiation in the liberal arts
Responsible citizenship
Understanding Christian Science
Donald Asher, a recent speaker for Principia's Career Development Center, is a passionate defender of the liberal arts in career building. Two of his several vital career skills involve quantitative and technical skills. The tools of this millennium demand more such mastery and demand it in more career settings. Our graduates with such mastery will gain wider, freer access to career choices.
Our catalog establishes the centrality of the liberal arts in a Principia education. Two of the seven classical liberating arts are mathematics and science. One cannot slight these fields and claim to be liberally educated. Each of the liberating arts brings a special depth and dimensionality to the thinker.
Our graduate citizens of the United States and other countries must have an honest grasp of modern science to be responsible and effective voters, writers, leaders, and educators (including the most important educators, parents).
Finally, the textbook of Christian Science is replete with metaphors and examples drawn from science, mathematics, and music. The unique method of Christian Science treatment is founded on a priori reasoning. The disciplines of math and computer science tune thought to challenge contradictory evidence.
Current research projects:
Artificial intelligence.
Like most about teaching at Principia:
The moment of sudden insight when a student sees further into a subject, and further into herself, than ever before.
Spend summers:
Working at Prin (Summer Session, observatory, labs, writing, preparing for classes), hiking, birding, fishing.
Interests besides teaching:
Astronomy, classical guitar, folk singing, birding, hiking.
Favorite book(s):
(non-religious) Gulag Archipelago, Contact, Genius, Einstein: The Life and Times
Favorite movie(s):
2001, Hoosiers, Children of a Lesser God, Hunt for Red October
What job I have had that is least like what I am doing now:
Warehouse worker and, later, machine operator, in a peanut butter factory.
