"If it is at all accurate to say that one is the product of his time, I would have to admit that I am a child of both the wild optimism and eventual disappointment of the Space Age. Born on the eve of Apollo to Peter and Judith (Dolata) Gunkel, I spent my formative years watching Roger Ramjet, reading about the Saturn V in the pages of National Geographic and eating space-food sticks by the handful..."

I have a PhD in philosophy from DePaul University (1996), where I wrote a dissertation on G.W.F. Hegel and the project of encyclopedia. I did my MA at Loyola University, Chicago. My BA was completed at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where I double majored in philosophy and communication.

Currently I hold the position of Associate Professor of Communication at Northern Illinois University. Prior academic positions include Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts at Carthage College and Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at DePaul University. I have also held the position of Media Communications Director at Sargent & Lundy Engineers and was a Video Production Technician at the Instructional Media Development Center in the School of Education at the Unversity of Wisconsin.

Among my awards and honors are the following: DAAD fellowship at the Albert-Ludwigs Universitaet in Freiburg, Germany; Invision New Media Gold Medal for Interactive Media; Lillian Cobb Faculty Travel Fellowship for International Teaching at Salzburg College in Salzburg, Austria; professonal association awards for scholarly papers, Northern Illinois University Research Grants...