Interested in Teaching at Fromm?

Drawing on a lifetime of teaching experience, the Fromm Institute faculty is primarily composed of retired professors from colleges and universities across the Bay Area and around the nation as well as some recognized experts in their given field. All are age peers with our students. 

Free from assigning grades and reading papers, these professors find great satisfaction in teaching people interested in learning just for learning’s sake. Furthermore, because they are encouraged to develop new courses that are of personal interest to them, the curriculum experience becomes dynamically stimulating for both the teachers and their students.

Faculty are hired to offer individual eight-week courses. Each course meets one and a half hours, once a week, for eight weeks or a total of twelve contact hours. All instructors are independent contractors and a generous honorarium is paid midway through each session.


We are currently accepting Course Proposals for the 2024-2025 Academic Year:

Please Submit Course Proposals Here by March 11, 2024

View the 2024-2025 Academic Calendar Here

See our Faculty Guidelines Here

If you have any questions, please contact:
         Associate Director Carla Hall – Carla@FrommInstitute.org
         Executive Director Derek Leighnor – Derek@FrommInstitute.org
         Or call 415-422-6805

Thank you.

Faculty

Prof.
Michael
Arnold

Mike Arnold is co-founder of ALCO Partners LLC, a small consulting firm founded in 2004 specializing in the measurement and management of interest rate risk in the banking industry. In 2012, he was invited by the UC Dept. of Economics to teach the honors course in intermediate macroeconomics, which he did through the spring of 2016. In 2015, Mike began teaching in the Osher Life Long Learning Institutes at Dominican University and Sonoma State. He has developed courses on the US Economy, the Bay Area economy, personal finance, international finance and Tariffs and the Republican Tax Plan.

Prof.
David
Clay Large

David Clay Large obtained a Ph.D. in History from U.C. Berkeley in 1974. He has taught at Berkeley, Smith College, Montana State University, and Yale University, where he was also a college dean (Pierson College). A specialist on modern Western and Central Europe, Large has published some twelve books on such topics as West German rearmament in the Adenauer era, Wagnerism in European politics and culture, urban studies (histories of Munich and Berlin), immigration politics during the Holocaust, the German-hosted Olympic Games (1936 and 1972), and the Grand Spa-towns of Central Europe. The German edition of his Berlin book, Biographie einer Stadt, was a Der Spiegel bestseller and a source for the popular TV series Berlin Babylon. He has appeared frequently as a “talking head” in NBC and PBS documentaries on the Olympic movement and on German television as an expert commentator on the histories of Munich and Berlin. Currently, he offers courses through the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco and serves as a Senior Fellow at U.C. Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies. He is also codirector of Berkeley’s Austrian Studies Program.

Prof.
Larry
Eilenberg

Larry Eilenberg has had a distinguished theatrical career as artistic director, educational leader, and pioneering dramaturg. Dr. Eilenberg earned his B.A. at Cornell University and his Ph.D. at Yale University. Professor Emeritus of Theatre Arts at San Francisco State University, he also taught at Yale, Cornell, the University of Michigan, and the University of Denver. Artistic Director of the renowned Magic Theatre during the period 1992-2003, Dr. Eilenberg has served as a commentator for National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition,” as a U.S. theatrical representative to Moscow, and as a popular lecturer on film and on comedy.

Prof.
Sunnie
Evers

Sunnie Evers received her Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance Art from UC Berkeley, with a specialty in sixteenth century Italian Renaissance painting and architecture. Her dissertation focused on the patronage of Paolo Veronese. She has taught at UC Berkeley and Stanford as visiting professor and lectured widely on Renaissance art on such topics as Paolo Veronese: Universal Artist; The Art of Villeggiatura: The Villa from Ancient Rome to Napa; The Engaging Gaze, From Leonardo to Vermeer; Visualizing Love in the Renaissance; and David Hockney: Places of Delight. She has also presented papers at the College Arts Association, The Renaissance Society of America and Sixteenth Century Studies.

Prof.
Scott
Foglesong

Scott Foglesong is the Chair of Musicianship & Music Theory at the SF Conservatory of Music, where he has been a faculty member since 1978. In 2008, he was the recipient of the Sarlo Award for Excellence in Teaching. He also teaches at UC Berkeley, where he has the privilege of introducing young people to Western art music. A Contributing Writer and Pre-Concert Lecturer for the SF Symphony, he also serves as Program Annotator for the California Symphony, Las Vegas Philharmonic, San Luis Obispo Symphony, and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. As a pianist, he has appeared with the Francesco Trio, Chanticleer, members of the SF Symphony, and solo/chamber recitals nationwide in a repertoire ranging from Renaissance through ragtime, jazz, and modern. At Peabody Conservatory, he studied piano with Katzenellenbogen and Wolff; later at the SF Conservatory he studied piano with Nathan Schwarz, harpsichord with Laurette Goldberg, and theory with Sol Joseph and John Adams.

Prof.
Andrew
Fraknoi

Andrew Fraknoi retired as the Chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College in 2017, having taught introductory astronomy and physics at three different colleges and universities (including SF State). He was selected the California Prof. of the Year in 2007 by the Carnegie Endowment for Higher Education and has won several national prizes for his teaching. He is the lead author of a free, open‐source, electronic textbook in astronomy, and has written books for teachers, children, and science fiction fans. He appears regularly on local and national radio, explaining astronomical developments in everyday language. The International Astronomical Union has named Asteroid 4859 Asteroid Fraknoi in recognition of his contributions to the public understanding of science.

Prof.
Alice F.
Freed

Alice F. Freed (Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Montclair State University) received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. She has taught at the Fromm Institute since 2016. Her fields of expertise are Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis, and the Structure of American English. Her research focuses on language and gender, question use in English, institutional discourse (“talk at work”), and the language of food. At Montclair State she taught both Linguistics and Women’s Studies. She has also taught courses as a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico, at New York University, and as part of Montclair’s Global Education Program at Beijing Jiaotong University (2010, 2011), at Shanghai University (2013), and at Graz University of Technology (2014). Her books include The Semantics of English Aspectual Complementation (Reidel 1979), Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice (Longman 1996) and “Why Do You Ask?”: The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse (Oxford University Press, 2010) co-edited with Susan Ehrlich. She has published numerous chapters in linguistics collections and articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Prof.
Patrick
Hunt

As an award-winning archaeologist, author, and National Geographic grantee and also National Geographic Expeditions Expert, Dr. Patrick Hunt earned his Ph.D. in Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and has taught at Stanford University for 28 years. Patrick directed the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project from 1994 to 2012, and has continued project related Hannibal and Otzi fieldwork in the Alps in the years since. His Alps research has been sponsored by the National Geographic Society, and he frequently lectures for National Geographic on Hannibal and the European mummy nicknamed Ötzi the Iceman. He is also a National Lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America, as well as an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and elected Fellow of the Explorers Club. He is the author of 21 published books, including the best-sellers Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History (Penguin Group 2007) and Hannibal (Simon and Schuster 2017). He was also named and listed in Who's Who in Biblical Studies and Archaeology by Biblical Archaeology Society in 1993. He frequently appears in documentaries for NatGeo, NOVA, PBS and other media.

Prof.
Douglas
Kenning

Douglas Kenning, raised in Virginia, received a PhD from the Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland, and has lived overseas for most of his life, teaching at universities in Tunisia, Japan, and Italy. Besides being a professor of history and literature, he also has been a professional biologist, actor, army officer, Manhattan taxi driver, academic administrator, and writer of books, articles, and stage plays. He lives half the year in the San Francisco Bay Area, giving lecture series on subjects related to the histories and cultures of the Mediterranean area, and half the year in Siracusa, Sicily, where he runs Sicily Tour, a small tour guide business.

James
Kohn

Now emeritus, Dr. Jim Kohn has been a member of the English Department at SFSU since 1975, and served as Chair from 2004 to 2007. He has taught courses in social variation of language, in second language acquisition, in post-colonial literature and in training English teachers. With his wife Elaine, he has taught overseas in China, Taiwan and Switzerland. His retirement gives him the opportunity to enjoy his present avocation as docent at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and at the S.F. Botanical Garden. At the Fromm Institute, he has taught courses "All about Yiddish" and "The Art of Ancient Mexico."

Prof.
Lily Iona
Mackenzie

For over 30 years, Prof. MacKenzie taught rhetoric to USF freshmen, but now, with joy, she is working with adults closer to her in age. A poet, essayist, and novelist, her reviews, interviews, short fiction, poetry, travel pieces, essays, and memoir have appeared in over one hundred and sixty-five American and Canadian venues. Her poetry collection All This was published in 2011. Fling!, a novel that features older adults, was published in 2015. Curva Peligrosa, another novel, was released in 2017, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy, appeared in 2019.  Weekly, she submits blog posts on some aspect of reading and writing to her blog at https://lilyionamackenzie.com/.

Kathleen
Maxwell

Kathleen Maxwell is Professor Emerita in the Department of Art and Art History at Santa Clara University. A recipient ofthe Dr. David E. Logothetti Teaching Award, Dr. Maxwell taught courses in Greek, Roman, Medieval, Byzantine, andRenaissance Art. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval and Byzantine art from the University of Chicago. Her researchfocuses on illuminated Greek Gospel books from the 10th to the 14th centuries. Recent publications include contributionstoThe New Testament in Byzantium(ed. D. Krueger and R. S. Nelson, 2016),A Companion to Byzantine IllustratedManuscripts(ed. V. Tsamakda, 2017), andReceptions of the Bible in Byzantium(Ceulemans and Crostini, 2021). Her book,BetweenConstantinople and Rome: An Illuminated Byzantine Gospel Book (Paris gr. 54) and the Union of Churcheswas published by Ashgate in 2014.

Rabbi
Stephen
Pearce

Stephen S. Pearce, DD, PhD, the Emeritus Senior Rabbi of Congregation Emanu‐El, served the congregation from 1993‐2013 and in 2018 was named the Taube Scholar endowed by the Taube Philanthropies. Ordained at the Hebrew Union College‐Jewish Institute of Religion, he earned his doctorate in counselor psychology at St. John’s University and has served on the faculty of the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, and summer writing workshops at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio.

Prof.
Cary
Pepper

Cary Pepper is a playwright, novelist, screenwriter, and nonfiction writer. His plays have been presented throughout the United States and internationally. He’s a four-time contributor to the Best American Short Plays series from Applause Books, and he’s published dozens of articles as well as other nonfiction.

Prof.
John
Rothmann

John F. Rothmann is a politics/foreign policy consultant specializing on the US, Middle East and the USSR. He is a frequent lecturer on American Politics and has been called “a scholar of modern Republicanism” while being acknowledged “for his unique insights, and in particular for rare and crucial materials.” He served as Director of the Nixon Collection at Whittier College, as Chief of Staff to Sen. Milton Marks, and Field Representative to Sen. Quentin Kopp, and was a founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Jewish Democratic Club. Widely published and honored, Rothmann has spoken on more than 150 campuses and has been on the faculty of USF. Both his B.A. and his Masters in Arts in Teaching are from Whittier College. He is the coauthor of Icon of Evil — Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam and Harold E. Stassen: The Life and Perennial Candidacy of the Progressive Republican. His article, “An Incomparable Pope — John XXIII and the Jews,” appeared in Inside the Vatican in April 2014.

Prof.
Richie
Unterberger

Richie Unterberger is the author of numerous rock history books, including volumes on the Who, the Velvet Underground, Bob Marley, and 1960s folk-rock. His book The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film won a 2007 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. He's taught about a dozen different courses at Fromm over the past half dozen years, and gives regular presentations on rock and soul history throughout the Bay Area incorporating rare vintage film clips and audio recordings. His next book, to be published by Taschen, is San Francisco: Portrait of a City.

Prof.
Gaye
Walton-Price

Gaye D. Walton-Price is a highly motivated and talented college professor, with years of teaching experience in a variety of academic settings. Dr. Walton-Price earned her PhD in Arabic language and linguistics at Georgetown University; and she is currently the Arabic instructor at University of San Francisco. She has lived and worked in Tunis, Tunisia, and in Cairo, Egypt for extended periods of time. After nearly 20 years’ college and university-level teaching experience, she knows that her passion is the Arabic language, both teaching it, and doing research with it and in it. Along the way, she has also gained expertise in teaching humanities and philosophy courses.

Laura
Wayth

Laura Wayth trained at the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University and theMoscow Art Theatre School Institute in Russia. She has worked internationally as an acting teacher and coach in Italy, Morocco,China, Poland, London, and Greece. She was a 2019­2020 Fulbright Senior Scholar to Poland, a 2011­2012 Fulbright Senior Scholarto Romania, a 2002­2003 Fulbright Fellow to Russia, and will be a Fulbright Senior Specialist to Taiwan in 2025. Prof. Wayth isthe author of three books onActing: A Field Guide to Actor Training,The Shakespeare Audition(Applause Books) andBreaking Down Your Script:A Step­by­Step Process for the Actor(Nick Hern Books). She is Professor of Acting and Coordinator of Actor Training at San Francisco StateUniversity and a guest acting instructor at the American Conservatory Theatre’s STC and Studio ACT.

Prof.
Michael
Zimmerman

Professor Zimmerman is Professor of English Emeritus at San Francisco State University where he taught for forty years. Before that, he taught at Cal and Columbia (where he received his Ph.D.). He specialized in James Joyce, American Literature, and Literature and Psychology. He is also a graduate of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (where he is on the faculty) and he has a psychoanalytic practice in Berkeley. He has recently published a book on Joyce, Tyrants of the Heart: A Psychoanalytic Study of Mothers and Maternal Images in James Joyce.