Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
Source: English Department Gallery Photos. Private Photograph and Documents Collection. Copyright Homer B. Lusk. Digitally reprinted with permission, courtesy of Homer Lusk, Grossmont College Professor Emeritus and former English Department Chair.
Source: Document Collections and Photographic Archives of the Grossmont College English Department. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District.
Source: The Gallery: A 35th Anniversary Photographic Directory of the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community Faculty, Administration, and Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, 1996. p100.
Nelson Paler earned his Bachelor of Arts from City University of New York in 1962. After graduation, he began a career in Virginia as a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps. Then, in fall of 1973, he was accepted to a graduate studies program at George Washington University, where he earned his Master’s of Arts degree in English and American Literature in 1976. Following his graduation from George Washington U., Paler continued to serve in the USMC for another eleven years but in 1985 transferred to land-locked Tucson and joined the University of Arizona staff as Associate Professor of Naval Science.
In 1990, now retired from the USMC, Paler moved to the San Diego area, a popular destination for retired naval officers and other military. He settled in Del Mar, California, and by the spring of 1991, Paler was invited by then English Department Chair Homer Lusk to begin working for the District with a modest English 120 teaching assignment at the East County Performing Arts Center (EPAC). By the Fall 1991 semester, his repertoire had expanded to include reading skills courses and basic composition classes. In fall of 1993, Nelson, alongside Basic Skills Coordinator Mary Donnelly and recently hired colleague Cathy Harvey, collaborated to design a late-start reading skills course, Comprehending College-Level Texts, which focused on increasing reading rates and college-level vocabulary. That same fall, Paler would also finally receive the chance to flex his GWU master’s education by teaching Introduction to Literature; the following year, he branched out into English 233: The American Short Story.
At the end of the Fall 2003 semester, at age 63, Nelson Paler retired from teaching and was conferred the rank of full Professor in May of 2004. Several years later he and his wife settled to Broomfield in Erie County, Colorado. However, in May 2011, Paler made a return visit to San Diego for a Memorial Day Semper Fi banquet, where, drawing from his long career as a United States Marine Corp officer and a literature and reading professor, he performed a recitation from Thomas Campbell’s "The Patriot's Blood is the Seed of Freedom's Tree,” and an excerpt from Robert G. Ingersoll’s “Decoration Day Oration.”
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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