A MATTER OF DEGREES

The CEO has a JD and an MD. The CFO is an MD and a CPA.

Joseph Dimento is a PhD with a JD. Charles Webb--two PhDs. Then there’s Richard Perry--PhD, linguistics, UC Berkeley; JD, Stanford University; philosophy of law, University of Louvain, Belgium.

While many struggle with algebra and grasp for the multiplicity of meaning in Melville, there is an increasing number of seasoned academics who whiz through graduate school and then turn around and do it again. Their hunger to learn is so prodigious they earn second and third advanced degrees from some of the nation’s most prestigious universities.

Richard Perry, a scholar who has studied eight languages--French, Italian, Arabic, Indonesian, Spanish, German, Latin and African Chaga--uses the phrase “gradual students” to describe himself and others who have done double time in graduate school. At UC Irvine, where Perry is a professor, there are so many faculty members with more than one degree that no one indulges them with kudos or singles them out as freaks.

Perry says combining highly theoretical disciplines with practical training opens up whole new ways of thinking. Just as learning “to live another language is to experience another way of being,” the study of, say, German philosopher Martin Heidegger and homelessness adds dimension to the study of complex social problems. Perry uses Heidegger, who analyzed human existence, as a reference when analyzing issues such as the legal rights of Native Americans.

William Thompson, 43, is a UC Irvine professor with a law degree from Berkeley, a doctorate in psychology from Stanford, expertise in DNA, former membership on the O.J. Simpson defense team and credentials as a Little League referee.

“Knowledge really is power,” he says. “The world needs worker bees and people who break the rules and look outside traditional ways of thinking--people who can think broadly. Narrow training tends to make you calcified. I’m convinced everyone will have to be interdisciplinary in the future.”

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At USC, the school of law is known for its interdisciplinary focus, particularly for its strength in combining law with economics. Matthew Spitzer of Pacific Palisades, for example, holds a PhD in social science from Cal Tech and a law degree from USC. He now teaches both subjects at both his alma maters.

Faced with fierce competition in science and high-tech fields, some professionals switch fields or go back to school to bone up in new areas. As health care becomes more business-oriented, UC Irvine is one of a growing number of institutions offering a double degree program for med school students who want a medical degree and a master’s in business administration.

It isn’t unheard of for a captain of industry to be a physician with a degree in law. Paul Abrams, for example, is president of the Seattle-based NeoRx Corp., a biotech company. He is a CEO with expertise in government and industry management, board certification in both internal medicine and medical oncology, and has degrees in medicine and law from Yale University.

“People who pursue multiple degrees are probably a subset of people who don’t necessarily look at life as divided into categories,” he says. “They look at what they need to learn to function in the workaday world.”

Then there are scholars such as Perry and Thompson, who become professionals in more than one discipline not to bolster their careers but simply out of an abiding passion to learn.

Since opening in 1965, UC Irvine has had a focus on interdisciplinary scholarship. In the School of Social Ecology, several faculty members have multiple degrees; the school was created to be a haven for interdisciplinary study--the mingling of subjects including law, psychology, political science and economics--as a way of trying to understand the major social problems of the day, from jury behavior to urban planning.

For the most part, those who have gone the distance with two or more full-fledged degrees listened to the interdisciplinary muse within. They are voracious readers but did not necessarily come from particularly well-educated families. The two most pronounced qualities they share are intellectual confidence and unlimited curiosity.

“I read the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times daily,” says Joseph Dimento, a UC Irvine professor with a degree in law and a doctorate in urban regional planning, both from the University of Michigan. “Every page is interesting to me.”

When not teaching a course in international law and management at UC Irvine or launching an environmental research project on the Black Sea, the 50-year-old professor might be found writing a paper--in English or Italian--evaluating the different perspectives of NAFTA, learning more about rap music from his sons or taking a four-mile jog.

In addition to the newspapers and academic journals he reads about law and society, Dimento also subscribes to several Italian magazines and journals, as well as National Geographic, Foreign Affairs and Gourmet. He’s been in the same book group for 22 years.

“It surprises me how many people are focused and single-tracked,” Dimento says. “I know people who are the most successful in their field who have never been out of the country. The narrow focus on success doesn’t interest me. The world is so much more interesting than that.

“But,” he hastens to add, “at some point, you do have to learn to say ‘no’ or you become superficial.”

Like others who could plaster their walls with degrees, Dimento didn’t come from a particularly well-educated family. Although his mother encouraged him to do well in school, he says she never pushed him or had an agenda about what he should “be.”

There are, of course, academic traditionalists who say the downside of being an interdisciplinary scholar is that wide wells never run deep. They are dismissed as dilettantes by the old guard, one-discipline scholars who believe their singular focus puts them in a superior class of the more “serious” intellectuals.

“There is a holier-than-thou attitude among some of the people with one discipline,” says Salvatore Maddi, a Harvard-educated professor in psychology and social behavior and former director of UC Irvine School of Social Ecology. “It’s an unresolvable issue and a silly one. Social problems have gotten so complex, they require many disciplines to solve them--research teams rather than single researchers who just go deeper and deeper and know more and more about less and less.”

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During the course of a week, poet Charles Webb moves from classroom to library, office to couch, desk to studio. On most weekdays, the former rock musician teaches writing and English at Cal State Long Beach. Fridays and Saturdays he sees patients at his Beverly Hills office. Evenings he writes poetry and music in his Los Angeles home.

Webb has a doctorate in English from Rice University and a doctorate in clinical psychology from USC. Referring to those with multiple degrees, he says, “I think we’re all people who tend to be adventurous, wide-ranging. We’re not cubbyholed.”

Webb, the recent recipient of the Morse Prize in poetry for his soon-to-be published book, “Reading the Water” (Northeastern Press), says there are clear connections between his two chosen fields. “In both writing and therapy, I try to come up with guiding metaphors,” he says. “Writers need to know everything, and all good writers are good psychologists.”

Peter Loewenberg combines a doctorate from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute with a doctorate in history and political science from Berkeley. He serves as an analyst and supervisor at the institute and as a professor at UCLA. His research focus includes modern European history and political psychology.

His analysis of radical right Russian leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, for example, is studied by foreign policy advisors. “Knowledge isn’t flat and one-dimensional,” Loewenberg says. “It’s like a beautiful stone. When you turn it, you see more dimensions.”

Until about World War I, when the academic structure became more specialized, interdisciplinary scholarship was de rigueur. Having knowledge carved up along disciplinary lines is a rather recent creation, says Jane Newman, a former director of UC Irvine’s Interdisciplinary Program of Women’s Studies, who also serves as a faculty assistant to the executive vice chancellor and is a professor of English and comparative literature.

“People with multiple degrees are those who are at the borders and intersections--what I call zones of contact. The center is, of course, much more predictable. The 21st century will require people to be cross-trained and interdisciplinary,” she says. “Knowledge isn’t all tied up in neat little bundles anymore.”

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Between the two of them, Stephen and Michelle Barker have eight degrees in seven disciplines--though each has “only” one doctorate--hers in psychology, his in English literature.

Michelle is a clinical psychologist in private practice, Stephen the associate dean of the School of Arts and acting chairman of studio art at UC Irvine. Michelle also has a degree in art history and a master’s in special education. Stephen--who has worked as a professional dancer, actor, director and classical guitarist--holds a master’s degree in drama and another one in dance from London schools, and a master of fine arts in creative writing.

Stephen suspects the connecting link he shares with other “gradual students” is a lust for life. “I can’t be contained,” he says. “As the world gets more complex, people need several disciplines. The task is not to get seduced by the tools, like the Internet. The victory of consumerism and of information capitalism is very dangerous. Education shouldn’t be bottom-line oriented. It’s about an understanding of the world and of people, and of art and literature.”

When their youngest boys were preschoolers and the couple were in graduate school, Michelle says, their schedules were far more flexible than if they’d worked full time. It was good for everyone. Everyone in the family understands tests and papers, she says.

Michelle, who is 50, says she and Stephen still have a couple of outstanding student loans. But it’s no big deal. She predicts they’ll be about paid off by the time the youngest son, who is 14, begins his higher education.