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Professor Oscar H. Criner

Welcome to my academic website

This site is intended to help you succeed in college and introduce you to the academic profession. I want you to experience the joy of scholarship.

For me, scholarship is something you do because you must. You have a curosity about all things. You want to know. You want to do. There may be no other reason to study except that you want to know about subject.

Do not confuse higher education with job training.While employment is one outcome of higher education, it should not be the focus of your college career. However, for those who succeed at scholarship, the rewards are very great.

However, scholarship is not usually considered a profession. But there is a very great need for scholars in the United States, especially for those who are native born. Teaching is what scholars do, but it is not all we do. We are also entrepreneurs, writers, businesspersons, artists, musicians, scientists, mathematicians, researchers, and engaged in a host of other endeavors.

This site is intended to encourage students and show how to develop skills at scholarship; and to consider becoming a scholar and college teacher. There is a critical shortage of African American scholars and teachers; and this is especially true in all historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This is expecially devastating to academic programs in the mathematical and computational sciences.

The shows the number of people applying to my university who chose various majors to study. Most of these people have not been on our campus. They have just graduated high school. The bars show the number of people who believe that they want to study in a given area.

Teaching is a family tradition. Oscar H. Criner is a fourth generation teacher in Texas. His great grandfather, A. J. Criner, was an itinerant teacher who founded schools in Southeast Texas after the Civil War, including Lincoln High School in Port Arthur and Charlton Pollard High School in Beaumont. Both his grandmother and great aunt taught in Beaumont and Houston and his parents taught in Mexia, Beaumont, and Houston schools. His sister Christine Criner-Smith is principal of Willowridge High School in Fort Bend County, Texas. Dr. Criner has taught at Grambling College in Louisiana, California State University at Hayward, and San Francisco State University.