Robert Tindol holds a joint appointment at Upper Iowa University as assistant professor of English and assistant professor of communications. A native Texan, he earned his Ph.D. in English at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, and has taught at UIU since August 2007.

Tindol has extensive experience in both print journalism and academia, having worked for a daily newspaper and a statewide political magazine in Texas and for a regional wire service in Los Angeles. In addition, he previously worked for 11 years as lead science writer at the California Institute of Technology, and for 9 years as a science writer in the news bureau at the University of Texas at Austin. He taught journalism as an adjunct at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, while regional editor at the Brownwood Bulletin, and later taught English as an adjunct at Austin Community College and Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California.

 Tindol’s academic interests include the role of science in American society and the interactions between science and literature. He is currently working on a book about the influence of early American Puritanism on the public’s attitude toward science.

He will regularly teach the “Writing in the Sciences” class at UIU, as well as literature classes on topics such as the American Renaissance, and communications classes such as media ethics and reporting.  He is also the faculty advisor for The Collegian, the student weekly newspaper at Upper Iowa.

He has won more than a dozen writing awards from organizations such as the Associated Press and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. He is a former board member of the Public Relations Association of Southern California Colleges, and has been a member of the National Association of Science Writers since 1996.

Fall 1 2008 Office Hours: MTRF, 10:45 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. and 2:30 - 3:30 p.m.; and by appointment