In the first of an occasional question-and-answer series exploring the people and personalities that comprise the BU Online community, we introduce Dr. Sam Hammer.
The Academic Coordinator of the Undergraduate Degree Completion Program, Sam has been teaching classes since the program was hatched in 2004, winning an award from the United States Distance Learning Association for the “Food Stuff” course that was subsequently adopted as a template for future courses, and assuming his Coordinator in 2007.
Born in Chicago, Sam earned two master’s degrees and worked in the former Soviet Union before coming to Boston in 1998 so he could begin work on a doctoral degree from Harvard University. Upon completion he started teaching at BU in 1993, and his fieldwork – sponsored in part by the National Geographic Society and the National Science Foundation – has taken him to spots of unbelievable beauty and natural interest as far afield as the Pacific Northwest, the Florida Panhandle, Australia, New Zealand, and the French Pacific colony of New Caledonia.
Click through for more on this father of three, who now lives in Cambridge with his wife, his youngest daughter, and an avocado tree.
