Catudal's Winter 2021 Courses

About Me

EDUCATION   Jacques Catudal was born in Montréal, Québec, and raised in Lachine along the St. Lawrence River. He graduated from Clinton Community College in New York, majoring in Theatrical Arts with emphasis on Directing.  At Clinton, Catudal was president of the student body and the sole author of the school constitution. He graduated from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy (magna cum laude). At Temple University he defended his doctoral dissertation, Philosophy and Knowledge Organization: A Kantian Perspective, under the direction of Joseph Margolis while teaching part-time at several Philadelphia colleges and universities. 

ACADEMIC CAREER Dr. Catudal was appointed by Drexel University in 1981 and served first as Instructor in the Department of Humanities and Communications, and later as Assistant then Associate Professor of Philosophy. In 1992, he was awarded the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching. From 1991 to 2001, Dr. Catudal also taught philosophy at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. In the mid- to late 90s, he served on the Drexel Faculty Senate, eventually as a member of the Executive Committee.  In January 2002, Catudal was named Head of Drexel’s Department of English and Philosophy but soon left that position having been named Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. As Vice Provost, he oversaw merging the undergraduate curricula of Hahnemann Medical College and the Medical College of Pennsylvania with Drexel’s curriculum. Catudal also wrote the first curriculum of Drexel’s new Law School, and was responsible for revising many academic policies including the tenure policy and the intellectual property policy, “Courses Offered Over the Internet.” Upon leaving the Provost’s Office in 2005, Catudal was presented with the Provost’s Award for Outstanding Service to the University.  His experience in the Provost’s Office, which reinforced the centrality of good teaching in a tuition-driven University, led him to focus his career intensively on the arts of teaching and program creation. His proposal for a new major, a revised minor, and two concentrations in philosophy became a reality in 2008, with Dr. Catudal serving as the Philosophy Program’s first Director. By that time, Catudal had developed and taught nearly 30 of the courses in Drexel’s philosophy curriculum in addition to serving on every Department committee. Catudal chaired hiring committees that brought outstanding philosophy faculty to the Program. Among the positions filled were Assistant Professorships for Drs. Andrew Smith, Nathan Hanna, and Flavia Padovani, and Teaching Professorships for Drs. Sarah Hansen and Patricia Grosse. Catudal would also later serve on the committee that would see the successful tenure and promotion review of Dr. Smith, and Chair the committee that saw Drs. Hanna and Padovani tenured and promoted. 

SCHOLARSHIP Dr. Catudal is co-editor, with Joseph Margolis, of The Quarrel Between Invariance and Flux: A Guide for Philosophers and Other Players (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001) and of a half dozen published articles, mostly in the area of ethics and computing. He was an early developer of educational web sites, and is self-taught in HTML coding and design. He currently maintains three sites in different areas of education, all of which have been in constant use for 20 years. In 2013, Dr. Catudal expanded his study of the geography, history and politics of ancient Greece, as well as studies of its leading philosophers. Extended travel to Greece and Magna Graecia (southern Italy and Sicily) in the fall of 2014, led to three presentations before the Philosophy Colloquium of Drexel University: “The Voyage to Tarentum” (9 February 2015), “The Import and Development of Geometry in Plato’s Academy” (25 January 2017) and “Socrates: The Virtue of Manliness and War” (23 January 2019). These are to serve as chapters in a developing book manuscript, Plato’s Pythagorean Pursuit: Divinity, Reason and Civil Society.

HOME AND FAMILY Dr. Catudal lives in Bryn Mawr during the school year and in the Adirondacks in the summer. He is a veteran canoeist, camper, and stunt kite flyer. He is married to Kathleen Case, now retired but formerly a Senior Vice President at the American College of Physicians and Executive Editor of Annals of Internal Medicine and later Publisher at the American Association for Cancer Research. Catudal has one son, Max (a teacher) and two stepsons, Ben (an attorney) and Jason (a neuropsychologist) who were both wise enough to marry two equally accomplished women, Heidi (an attorney and corporate officer) and Tammy (a teacher). He is especially proud of his four grandchildren, Sasha, Leighton, Rowan and Talya. Last, but probably not least, he is the owner of the world’s most beautiful and smartest Newfoundland, AKC Dame Annabelle of Sprucehill, or just plain Annie. (She made me write that.)