Dr. Jacob W. Glazier
Vitality & Human Flourishing
Adjunct Professor: Department of General Education and Psychology
April 2021

Dr. Jacob W. Glazier is an adjunct professor in the Department of General Education and Psychology. He is originally from Illinois and grew up in a small farming community. Dr. Glazier’s father and uncle were both farmers. He studied for a M.S. Ed. In Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Western Illinois University. Eventually, he found his way to Carrolton, Georgia where he studied at the University of West Georgia to become a Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology with an emphasis in Consciousness and Society.

Dr. Glazier was drawn to work at Life University for a myriad of reasons. “It has many of the same values that I was taught at West Georgia and that I value myself personally,” he explained. “Coming out of a humanistic tradition at West Georgia, it fit well with Positive Psychology at LIFE and was a really natural move for me.”

Depending on the quarter, Dr. Glazier teaches anywhere from one to three classes. In Winter Quarter 2021, he taught Health Psychology. “I’ve kind of taken the role of teaching at night, so I get to campus around 4:30 p.m., class starts at 5:30 p.m. and we will go until almost 8:00 p.m.” While it is a long class, he says the students make the experience enjoyable because they are so engaged. “As long as we can find something that we are interested in learning about together, it makes the time fly by.”

The high quality of student at LIFE has been really encouraging for Dr. Glazier. “I haven’t really found that at other universities where I’ve taught. What I mean by that is these students don’t fit into a mainstream mold.” Traditionally, students who study psychology want to go on to practice as clinicians, but Dr. Glazier says his students challenge him intellectually, which he finds refreshing. “They do so by being really creative with their thinking and not being afraid to think outside the box. That, for me, has been something very special that I’ve only been able to experience at LIFE.”

Professional success for Dr. Glazier means always pushing himself as an educator. Recently he has been training on LIFE Flex, a new teaching model the University is debuting that offers students the option of learning in the classroom or virtually. “This is a really exciting thing for me to be participating in because it’s really the wave of the future in terms of education. I’m always trying to grow and challenge myself as an educator.”

When LIFE Flex becomes fully implemented, students may choose to engage with their class in a face-to-face experience on-campus or synchronously (real-time) online via Blackboard, LIFE’s learning management system. A self-guided, asynchronous (not real-time) option may also be available in Blackboard for a portion of their courses. In this student-directed learning experience, they have options in deciding how, where and when to engage with their professors and classmates.

Life University’s guiding principle is Lasting Purpose: To live an inner-directed life, to give, to do, to love, to serve, out of your own abundance. Dr. Glazier takes Lasting Purpose to heart as an essential part of his life. “The philosophy that undergirds the [General Education and Psychology] department at LIFE really works to espouse the virtues of advocating for a vision of vitality and human flourishing.”

 

 

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