Frank K. Fair

Dr. Frank Fair is Professor of Philosophy and Coordinator of the Philosophy Program at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) where he has taught since 1971. In that time Frank has won the SHSU university-wide Excellence in Teaching award and the Excellence in Service award, and in 2011 he was named one of ten Piper Professors in Texas higher education by the Piper Foundation. He has taught a wide range of courses, often team teaching with colleagues from History, Chemistry, Biology, Economics, Education, and Political Science, and including an Honors Seminar on Decision-Making. In keeping with that interdisciplinary spirit, Frank has published articles not only in philosophy, but also in the areas of biology, education, religion, and quality management.

Currently, in addition to his regular teaching and administrative responsibilities, Frank is the Managing Editor of the journal INQUIRY: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, a journal which he brought to SHSU. Finally, he is the Principal Investigator on a project funded by the Powell Foundation. The project is called “Socrates in the Schools,” and it involves all of the 800+ 7th and 8th grade students at a local public school in a year-long study of the effect of a program of forming communities of inquiry in the classroom on students’ cognitive abilities. The project replicates a study in Scotland that showed remarkably strong results, results that were durable enough to be visible when the authors of the Scottish study followed up two years later.

Insightful Quality with Victor Sower is Frank's first book.