Thomas Dean

Dr. Thomas Dean is a Courage & Renewal® facilitator and loves to work with others to discover, understand, and express the “wild soul” in all of us: how our authenticity and life purpose are intertwined with our relationships with the natural world. Thomas is senior presidential writer/editor at the University of Iowa, where he also teaches interdisciplinary humanities and writing courses. He has taught in numerous community programs, including the Iowa Summer Writing Festival; has facilitated retreats and workshops; and is a trained Land Ethic Leader through the Aldo Leopold Foundation, bringing programs on Leopold and the land ethic to libraries and nature centers across Iowa. His books include Under a Midland Sky and Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of the Prairie Spirit (co-authored with Cindy Crosby), both from Ice Cube Press, and he has published numerous essays in national and regional academic and general audience publications. He also edited The Grace of Grass and Water, a collection of essays on the late Minnesota author Paul Gruchow, also from Ice Cube Press. Thomas has served on a number of boards of cultural and civic organizations, including the Iowa City Public Library (for which he served two terms as president), Humanities Iowa, FilmScene (Iowa City), and the State Historical Society of Iowa, Inc. He earned bachelor’s degrees in English and music history and literature from Northern Illinois University and a PhD in English from the University of Iowa. Before returning to Iowa, he taught at Cardinal Stritch College (Milwaukee, Wisconsin); Michigan State University; and Moorhead State University (Moorhead, Minnesota). Thomas and his wife, Susan Prepejchal, have two grown children, and they are adoptive parents of three senior dogs as well as permanent foster parents of a senior cockatiel.