ʻATENISI INSTITUTE

Dr. Raymond Zepp, slated to be President of Dewey International University in western Cambodia later this year, joined 'Atenisi's faculty autumn semester as visiting professor of logic, mathematics, and statistics. Prof. Zepp holds a PhD in mathematics education from Ohio State University in the U.S. and, prior to co-founding Dewey International University in 2009, served as Fulbright professor of mathematics at the Université d'Abidjan on Africa's Ivory Coast.

Among numerous international publications, the logician has authored a statistics manual for UEA Press in Hong Kong, as well as articles on cognition in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology and Psychologia.

John Dewey (1859-1952), whose philosophy of pragmatism guides DIU and Zepp's instruction, was a U.S. philosopher whilst serving on the faculties of the Universities of Michigan, Chicago, and Columbia. Along with sociologist Thorstein Veblen and historian Charles Beard, he co-founded the New School for Social Research in 1919, whose postgraduate faculty awarded 'Atenisi dean Dr Michael Horowitz a Masters degree in political philosophy a half century later.

Although pragmatic philosophy was pioneered in the U.S. by Charles Sanders Peirce at Johns Hopkins University, Dewey further evolved the outlook. Briefly, pragmatism argues that intellect ought to engender practical results, not mere description. In Zepp's classes, for example, students learn how to apply logic, mathematics, and statistics to sundry problems currently confronting the planet.