Here's a little information about my background.  Born in 1943, I was always taught to work hard.  I completed an A.A. degree at El Camino College when I was 19, a B.A. at Whittier College at age 21 and a master's degree at UCLA at 22.  During college I paid my bills by working as a newspaper reporter, but I wanted to teach.  So at 22 I became a full time faculty member at Riverside City College in 1965.  Two years later I became the editor of a small daily newspaper and taught my first class at CSUF.  I joined the full time faculty at CSUF in 1968 and pursued a doctorate at UCLA evenings and weekends, earning the Ph.D. in 1970.  After a year out of school, I went to law school, taking night classes while teaching full time.  I received my J.D. from Loyola and passed the California bar exam in 1975.

    In the years since, I've  practiced law in California and Washington, DC--but I always returned to college teaching and writing.  And more writing...  The Harcourt/Wadsworth textbook, Major Principles of Media Law, went through 20 editions under my authorship.  The California Supplement, which covers the specifics of state media law, appeared in 44 semesterly editions.  I've written several other books and taught on several other campuses including USC, where I moonlighted by teaching a First Amendment class to about 160 students a semester for 11 years.  Some of the books are shown below.  I retired from teaching at the end of the fall, 2002 semester.

    Resumes often list honors and awards.  They can mean a lot--or very little.  Two that really meant a lot to me were the Distinguished Service Award of the Journalism Association of Community Colleges, which only one other person had  received at that time, and the designation as one of the 50 outstanding alumni of El Camino College on that college's 50th anniversary in 1997. 
 

                                                                                                -Wayne Overbeck 

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