Past Instructors

Here are the excellent past instructors we have featured over the years. We hope many of them will teach with us again in the future, and we’ll keep you posted when they decide to do so. We are so proud of the academic courses we have sponsored over the last eleven years.

Ed Miller
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Ed Miller

Ed Miller grew up in Teaneck, N.J., where his parents delivered newspapers for a living and were members of the Communist Party. Ed has been a writer, editor, and publisher of newspapers, magazines, newsletters, …

Read More
Julie Mockabee
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Julie Mockabee

Julie Mockabee graduated from Massachusetts College of Art with a BA in Art History. During her study she found herself constantly drawn to the work from the Bauhaus Era. She has done extensive research on the…

Read More
Pat Nash
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Pat Nash

Dance has been a passion of Pat’s from the time she was two years old and first danced to The Nutcracker Suite in her living room. It has continued to be an important part of her life. She is grateful for the…

Read More
Christopher Ostrom
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Christopher Ostrom

Credits include productions for Odyssey Opera, Opera San Jose, Tulsa Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Mobile Opera, Hawaii Opera Theater, Asolo Repertory Theatre, Kentucky Opera…

Read More
John Portnoy
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

John Portnoy

John Portnoy holds degrees in biology (BA), wildlife biology (MS) and marine ecology (PhD). He has lived in Wellfleet since 1979, and worked as an ecologist for Cape Cod National Seashore from 1979 to 2008…

Read More
Michael Pregot
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Michael Pregot

Dr. Pregot has served as a secondary school administrator at the middle school and high school levels for 15 years and as a P-12 school superintendent for 15 years. Most of his administrative experiences…

Read More
Steve Reynolds
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Steve Reynolds

​During my theatre training at Tufts-in-London and The University of Michigan in the 1970s, I studied and experienced many different approaches to Shakespeare's plays. At Wittenberg University in…

Read More
Robert Rindler
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Robert Rindler

ROBERT RINDLER has been a part-time resident of Wellfleet for more than 30 years. Since moving here full-time in 2005 he has served on the Boards of CCCC (Cape Cod Community College) and WPH (Wellfleet Preservation Hall), chaired the Education Committee at…

Read More
Seth Rolbein
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Seth Rolbein

Seth Rolbein, award-winning journalist, editor, and documentary filmmaker, served for the past six years as chief of staff and then senior adviser to Cape and Islands Senator Dan Wolf. He recently became the Director of the Fisheries Development Trust at the Cape Cod…

Read More
Martha L. Rothman
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Martha L. Rothman

Martha Leibowitz Rothman, FAIA, graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1965 with a Master of Arts in Architecture. She joined Rothman Partners in 1971, founded in1968 by her husband Elliot Paul Rothman…

Read More
Jim Sefcik
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Jim Sefcik

Jim Sefcik retired as Director of the Louisiana State Museum system in 2004 following management positions at the NY State Museum, the Chrysler Museum, and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. He taught undergraduate and graduate courses on Early America in…

Read More
John Shuman
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

John Shuman

John Shuman is a theatre actor and director now based in Wellfleet. He began a New York career in Lanford Wilson’s “The Hot l Baltimore” for Circle Repertory and then appeared on and off Broadway and in regional theaters including Yale Rep, Guthrie Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre and Portland Stage. For many years he has performed the solo play,“Underneath the Lintel” by Glen Berger, last seen here at Payomet. Other Cape appearances have been with WHAT, Cape Playhouse and last year in “The Lady Hamlet” at The Provincetown Theatre.

John has taught at the Bread Loaf School of English (Middlebury College) in Vermont

and led improvisation workshops for adults and locally at Wellfleet Elementary School. For Open University John has co-taught courses on the playwrights A. R. Gurney and Thornton Wilder.

Read More
Jan Sidebotham
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Jan Sidebotham

Jan Sidebotham has been an avid Open University student since she took the course on Middlemarch (and subsequent courses on Bleak House, The Golden Bowl, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Mrs. Dalloway, Absalom, Absalom, and War and Peace)…

Read More
Toby Simon
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Toby Simon

Toby Simon retired 7 years ago from her role as the director of the Gertrude Hochberg Women’s Center at Bryant University. Serving as the first director, Simon’s responsibilities included providing leadership for programs addressing women’s concerns, collaborating…

Read More
Jeff Tash
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Jeff Tash

Jeff Tash has owned a home in Wellfleet for the past quarter century. Prior to retirement, Jeff was an entrepreneurial CEO and, before that, a corporate executive at Hewitt, DEC and IBM. Nowadays, Jeff channels his twin passions for Wellfleet and computing into a popular website…

Read More
John Thornley
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

John Thornley

John Thornley has a Bachelor’s Degree in Art and Architectural History from Dartmouth College and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from The Princeton School of Architecture. He began his professional career working with Eero Saarinen, he…

Read More
Don Wilding
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

Don Wilding

Since the start of the millennium, Don Wilding has been telling stories of Cape Cod Outer Beach history. An award-winning writer and editor for Massachusetts newspapers since 1985, Don has contributed the “Shore Lore” history column for The Cape Codder newspaper of…

Read More
David Wright
Rhoda Flaxman Rhoda Flaxman

David Wright

David Wright is the author of, "The Famous Beds of Wellfleet: A Shellfishing History," and has worked at the Wellfleet Historical Society and Museum for 20 years researching, interpreting and teaching Wellfleet's history. Having spent 22 years. as a summer resident and 38…

Read More