Dr. Michael Vavrus is Professor Emeritus at The Evergreen State College and author. He fully retired from formal education June 2023. He taught interdisciplinary courses focused on the intersection of education, history, and political economy. His teaching and research critiques and counters distorted master narratives of history and current events. Below are some of his published works.
Michael is past president of the Association of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges for Teacher Education and the past president of the Washington state chapter of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. He has also served as the scholarship/research committee chair for the “Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, & Gender,” a special interest group of the American Educational Research Association.
As a student, Michael approached his studies from an interdisciplinary perspective: Graduated from Drake University with a B.A. in political science with a minor in history; studied at the University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico, and at the United Nations through Drew University; earned a M.A.from Michigan State University in social & philosophical foundations of education with a minor in African history (an interest from his time as a classroom teacher in rural Ethiopia as a Peace Corps volunteer); and graduated from Michigan State University with a Ph.D. in instructional design with a minor in economic, which led to his research on teacher labor and alienation.
In West Virginia, Michael applied his interdisciplinary interests as teacher/director of a parent-run one-room elementary school and as a public school teacher of the gifted. His research and teaching continues to reflect his interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning. For example, one of his last courses was “Political Economy of Fascist Politics: Consequences and Resistance.”
Michael lives in Olympia, Washington, with his wife and has three children and three grandchildren. When not in the college library, he can often be found hiking along the college’s forest trails that lead to the Eld Inlet of the Puget Sound/Salish Sea.
Dr. Vavrus can be contacted at vavrusm@evergreen.edu