About the Author
Jim Young
After serving for thirty years in various aspects of higher education, Dr. James H. Young is currently a documentary/fine art photographer, spiritual writer and educational consultant. He has served with distinction as a professor of education, distinguished professor of higher education, and in a variety of leadership positions, including President of State University of New York at Potsdam and Chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
For six years Dr. Young also served as president of CUIDES, an international association of college and university presidents from the U.S., Mexico, and Central and South America whose goal it was to further economic and social advancement in their respective regions of the world. He also served on many boards and committees, locally, nationally and internationally. Among them were elected positions on the Board of Directors of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), the Board of Overseers of Regents College of the University of the State of New York, and the International Association of University Presidents. He has received honorary degrees and distinguished professorships in Mexico, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Chile and has been honored for his contributions to the world of the fine and performing arts. Dr. Young is widely published in professional national journals and has received awards from national councils and state boards in both education and the arts.
Young, who exercised an early retirement option to pursue his art and spiritual interests, is a published, award-winning writer, poet and documentary/fine art photographer who has received grants and gifts for support of his art, some of which is found in institutional and private collections nationally. His photographic images are exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad. Dr. Young is a graduate of the ecumenical School for Spiritual Directors at the Pecos Benedictine Monastery (NM), and served as the monastery’s first lay director of public relations and fund-raising, where he initiated an extensive religious arts program. Basically a metaphysician who labels himself as an orthodox eclectic, he also has availed himself of numerous holistic healing intensive programs and is a Reiki, Christian Science and Holographic Repatterning practitioner in addition to serving as a spiritual director. The author of a dozen spiritual manuscripts, he is a lifetime student of spirituality and its implications for reframing life’s journey, especially from one of separation and the pain separation engenders, to one of Oneness, and the inner joy and peace that infills from this perspective. Dr. Young is a gifted inspirational speaker who often uses life’s parables to convey spiritual meaning, and inspires others to look within for the Truth that can transcend the superficial.