Author's Acknowledgements

Sometime in the fall of 2018, Dr. Moshe Sokol, Dean of the Lander College for Men, nominated me to the Touro Academy of Leadership and Management. TCALM, as it became known, is an advisory group to our institution’s Provost and President concerning institution-wide strategic initiatives. Thank you Dr. Sokol for your support in this and so many other enterprises. You are my mentor, colleague, and friend.

As a member of TCALM, I was privileged to sit through fascinating monthly seminars on multiple subjects delivered by compelling and diverse speakers on a range of topics. In the end, my team, consisting of Dr. Barbara Capozzi, and Dr. Jennifer Zelnick, created the Touro Interdisciplinary Institute for Healthy Aging (TIIHA). I wish to thank TCALM management, and especially Drs. Laurie Bobley, Sabra Brock, and Alan Sebel for the fine work they did in designing and implementing the program. In the Fall of 2019, Touro’s president, Dr. Alan Kadish ceremoniously awarded me and my new colleagues, Certificates of Completion. It was a privilege and an honor.

In the course of my membership in TCALM, I met Sara Tabaei, a fellow member and Touro Library’s Information Literacy Director, who introduced me to Open Touro, an open educational resources (OER) project that she initiated in 2018. This led to my being introduced to Mr. Kirk Snyder, Touro’s OER and Instruction Librarian, who coordinated the peer review process for this book, painstakingly edited my words, and formatted the raw document into the highly readable and aesthetic work you will see on the pages to follow. Mr. Snyder’s endless patience, diligence, and unfailing attention to details are admired with gratitude. This work would never have seen the light of day without you, Kirk. Ms. Jacquelyn Albanese, a student library assistant, complemented Kirk with invaluable production assistance.

This work started out as class notes and gradually developed into the product before you. The questions and thoughts of my students are embedded in these pages. I learned new perspectives to the material from students. These questions often resulted in my penning wholly additional pages concerning issues that had not occurred to me and which demanded development. I wrote this book for you. Thanks, guys!

I wish to express my appreciation to Touro’s Dean of Faculties, Dr. Stanley Boylan who, over the years, has supported my academic work and with whom I can say that I have developed a warm personal and productive professional relationship.

Last, I owe may greatest gratitude to my wife and three amazing children. When I joined Touro University’s Queens campus (the Lander College for Men), the school had just opened and had few students. The demands on my time were challenging. My then two children were under the age of three and needed paternal attention. I would come home late at night after having completed my classes and they would already be asleep. My now three children know little about my long life before I joined Touro; they know me only as a Touro professor. They forgave me for not being there to do homework with them (I did manage to squeeze in some) and for not tucking them in at night. They came out alright, thanks to the wonderful love and unceasing care of their mother, my dear wife, Mira.

And it is to her that I owe the deepest and never-ending gratitude. Mira, you personify the notion of Eshet Chayil, and are my personal Woman of Valor. To say more would merely be understatement and misspent words (haval al hazeman). I love you forever and always.

I am humbled and grateful to each and every one mentioned on these pages, and it is to you that these pages are dedicated.