When Jon Weiss (MA ’21) found the Master of Arts program in Interdisciplinary Studies at Western New Mexico University, he did not just find it serendipitous. Said Weiss, “I read the description [of the program], and I thought, ‘That can’t be right. That’s too close to what I want. I must be reading something incorrectly,’ It didn’t seem possible that there was something that put together … what I was interested in doing.”
What Weiss was interested in doing was getting a degree that would allow him to explore his diverse interests. Having worked for many years as a mediator in Chicago and not ready for retirement, Weiss explored work in information technologies, tutoring, and teaching high school before deciding he wanted to go to graduate school. He had already earned bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Information Technology and taken numerous science classes, and he was ready for a new challenge. After finding the MA program in Interdisciplinary Studies at WNMU, Weiss immediately applied and started taking classes remotely from his home base of Fort Lauderdale, FL. “It turned out to be exactly what I wanted,” he said.
Through WNMU, Weiss put together a program that brought together History, English and Information Technology. His focus was inspired by a class taught by Professor of English Deborah Heller in which he read Mary Shelley’s classic novel “Frankenstein” in historical context. “When I read Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” in her class, I realized that [Shelley] was actually writing about AI.” Frankenstein’s creation “had a more human form than the kind of AI we talk about today,” said Weiss, “but nevertheless, it had a consciousness, it was capable of understanding and taking information and applying it.” This realization helped Weiss to see how his different interests fit together. “You have to be able to look at everything historically to understand where technology is today and where it’s going,” he said, “But you also have to have the skills to research and write about it, to communicate effectively, if you are going to make a difference.”
Since graduating from WNMU in 2021, Weiss has been teaching at the college level. So far, he has had opportunities to teach English Composition, English Literature and Computer Literacy courses, and this fall he is also teaching American History at Broward College, putting to use all three of the concentrations he studied in his graduate program.
“I am not surprised by Jon’s wide-ranging success,” said Heller, “since in the many courses he took from me he always had the uncanny ability to seek out rewarding aspects of texts—sometimes very subtle things—that appealed to him personally and fired up his passion for reading. It might be the meaning of music in an Ian McEwan novel or the sound of a narrator’s voice in an Audible recording of a William Maxwell novel. He would detect something deep and ferret it out as a natural part of his intuitive reading process. When Jon graduated, and book reading turned into real life, he continued to venture out and find these wonderful opportunities, here and there, where he felt he might be of use to students and be able to develop himself further.”
“I learn by reading,” said Weiss, “I read in order to understand and make sense of my own experiences. [Reading] in that guided format that graduate school will give you, really helped me to think more deeply, in a focused way, about where I wanted to go.”