Michael T. Greenwell born in Louisville, Kentucky U.S.A. obtained a B.A. in sociology and a M.S. in education from the University of Kentucky. While studying at the university, his interests were in political economy, philosophy, and foundations of education, with a focus on critical theory and phenomenology. After graduation, he began his career in the field of public opinion and survey research, instead of immediately entering a doctoral program in the School of Education at the University of Cincinnati. Over the next 20 years, Michael went on to manage at survey research centers in several prestigious American universities, including the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Indiana University, and the University of Michigan.
Michael was head of Computer-Assisted Studies (CAS) in the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) at UCLA for approximately 12 years. CAS was a research facility used to teach university students survey research methods, to conduct local and national public opinion surveys for eminent professors in the social sciences, and to conduct simulation experiments for researchers. CAS conducted surveys for research designed by university professors and researchers from foundations and government agencies. He managed and later directed the Los Angeles County Social Survey for about 10 years, a public opinion survey used to teach research methods to students in the departments of psychology and political science at UCLA.
During his career, Michael was in charge of teaching survey research methods to thousands of students, and he managed the data collection of more than a hundred local and national public opinion surveys. He was one of the first managers to conduct fully automated computer-assisted surveys at a university research facility. He also managed one of the first computer-assisted surveys using a questionnaire with text in multiple foreign languages.
Michael was a participant and member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), and gave presentations at Annual International Field Directors Conferences. He also served as guest journal referee/peer for an article submitted to Public Opinion Quarterly, the official AAPOR journal. He is co-author of a peer-reviewed journal article on survey research measurement in the Journal of Official Statistics, and he has co-written several scholarly papers presented at professional conferences and official reports for federal government agencies. He taught political science at Jefferson Community College.
Michael has taught students at the School of Translation and Interpretation Studies in Shandong University at Weihai since February 2002. Before retiring from UCLA and teaching in China, he completed a course at UCLA on Teaching English Abroad EFL—English as a foreign language. He teaches English language skills to undergraduate and graduate students, and teaches culture and society of English-speaking countries to undergraduates. He is actively in communication with past students who graduated and have gone to work or to do further study. He also serves as consultant to staff at the Professional Managers Training Center at Tsinghua University.
His hobbies include jogging along the seaside, bonsai gardening, learning Chinese culture and language, and reading. He is currently compiling a working bibliography and writing a syllabus for a seminar on phenomenology as an introduction to qualitative research methods.