Humanities Faculty Profiles

Bonnie Ellis teaches communications, sociology, humanities, research and English courses both online and at the Detroit Campus. She holds a Ph.D. in Education and an M.A. in Communication, with a concentration in Language, Speech and Hearing and Communication, from Ohio State University.

Bonnie has over 30 years of experience teaching adult learners and ESL students, over 20 years in curriculum and program development and over 9 years in online teaching and course development.  Her area of expertise is speech communication, specifically speech anxiety, and she developed “The Awareness and Control Method” to help individuals overcome their fear of public speaking. Bonnie has trained more than 10,000 individuals in the method, including children, teachers, business people and Army generals.

She is currently the President and CEO of Management Dimensions Inc., a consulting company with offices in Michigan and Ohio that specializes in communication and health care. As part of her work, Bonnie develops and implements customized training programs for public and private sector organizations.

Bonnie is also Board President of the Macomb Symphony Orchestra and a board member and past president of All the World’s a Stage, an award winning theatre arts education organization in Southeastern Michigan.

The information in this profile was provided by the subject. 

Thomas Girvin is an award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter and media consultant who has held faculty appointments at University of California Irvine, University of Southern California, The Ohio State University, Sinclair Community College, University of Dayton and Antioch College.

His research topics have included Telecommunication Pedagogies, Interactivity & the New Media Technologies and Social Aspects of the New Communication Technologies. He holds an MFA in Cinema Production from the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television and an M.A. in Media Studies from Antioch University.

At University of Phoenix, Thomas teaches communication, humanities, social sciences and general education courses at the Cincinnati-Dayton Campus. Thomas especially loves facilitating humanities courses because "humanities are the measure of a civilization and therefore in these courses, students challenge moral and social assumptions to enhance their own cultural intelligence."

Thomas is the founding director of the annual ScreenPeace film festival and on the Board of Directors of the Dayton International Peace Museum. In his spare time, he can be found enjoying the company of monks and fellow pilots.