Biography of Dr. Steven Porter

Steven Porter was born in New York City in 1943 and throughout his life has continued to develop four streams of activity: education, political involvement, writing, and music.

He earned BS, MS, PhD, and PD degrees in fine arts and educational administration at leading university centers in the New York metropolitan area and enjoyed a career in teaching and educational administration which lasted from 1967 to 2002. His last two positions were as the founder and head of the Rod Serling School of Fine Arts in Binghamton, NY and as the head of the division of Musical Theatre at Mercyhurst College in Erie, PA.

Dr. Porter began his involvement in politics in the 1960s working for reform Democratic candidates in New York City. His early campaign experiences were for New York City Councilmanic races in the borough of Queens. Later, as a Graduate Fellow at Queens College of the City University of New York, he worked for New York Senator Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. His assignment was to organize the Queens College campus for Senator Kennedy in preparation for the 1968 New York primary. The Senator was assassinated before the primary was held.

Between 1975 and 1980, Dr. Porter wrote a weekly column for the Northport Journal on Long Island which commented upon the events of the day particularly as they affected America’s political, economic, and educational climate.

When he moved to Binghamton, to start the Rod Serling School of Fine Arts, Dr. Porter was asked to help Dr. Kathleen Gaffney, the Broome County Commissioner of Public Health, in her 1988 campaign for the New York State Senate. In 1990, the Democratic Party asked Dr. Porter to run for that office. The district (NY SD-51) is a conservative Republican one, and the Democrats needed a voice which articulated the principles of the party, especially those involving more egalitarian economic action and laws which reversed the mistreatment of women. The party asked Dr. Porter to run repeatedly to give voice to those principles, and in all, he ran three times.

When he moved to Pennsylvania, the Democrats again approached him to run for the United States Congress which he did in both 2004 and 2006. His various campaigns brought him into close contact with many of the top Democrats of the nation including Congressmen Maurice Hinchey, John Murtha, and Dennis Kucinich; Senators Hilary Clinton, John Kerry, and Bill Bradley; and Governors Mario Cuomo and Ed Rendell.

Dr. Porter still maintains his congressional website (www.porter4congress.com) which continues to have thousands of hits per year. He is currently preparing for a local race for the Erie County Council, the election to be held in November of 2009.

Dr. Porter’s teaching career began in 1967 when he was appointed to the faculty of the Mannes College which is the Music Conservatory of the New University for Social Research in New York City. There he taught both Music Theory and The Philosophy of Education. Following the awarding of his PhD from the City University of New York Graduate Center and his PD degree from the C.W. Post Center of Long Island University, Dr. Porter began to do ability grouping research through grants from the New York State Senate and the Carnegie Foundation. His work in this area led to a proposal from the Binghamton City School District in 1984 to found a school of fine arts which was subsequently named for writer Rod Serling who had grown up in Binghamton. Dr. Porter managed the Rod Serling School for eighteen years until his appointment to Mercyhurst College in Erie, PA as the head of the division of Musical Theatre.

Dr. Steven Porter retired from active teaching in 2002 after a 37-year career. His work in fine arts education and educational administration garnered both national and international attention. Occasionally, he still appears as a guest lecturer, most recently at the Pedagogical College of Borovichi in Russia.

In the late 1980s, Dr. Porter accompanied Binghamton Mayor Juanita Crabb to Russia with members of his touring choir and jazz combo as part of a diplomatic exchange of the Sister Cities Program. The trip was filmed by CBS-TV Binghamton affiliate WBNG, and the resultant documentary won the New York State Broadcaster’s Award for the Best Documentary of 1989. It was this exposure which led to the Democrats of the area asking him to run for the state senate.

Dr. Porter began writing and composing in 1970 and since then has published over 150 works for the concert and theatrical stage as well as twenty books ranging in topics from education to theatre and from fiction to political science and philosophy. His choral works continue to be performed many times each year around the world.

Among his books are WISDOM'S PASSING: the decline of American public education, a comprehensive review of the faltering U.S. schools systems; and AMERICA’S DYING DEMOCRACY, a political treatise on the current corruption of the U.S. political system. He has also published a philosophical treatise entitled THE ETHICS OF A DEMOCRACY, in which he postulates an ethical standard and applies it to the major issues of modern times.

Today, Dr. Porter continues to be active in local politics and continues to write and compose. He is married to Rita, his wife of 35 years, and together they have devoted much of their marriage to the rescue and rehabilitation of abused and abandoned dogs. His passionate recreational hobby is golf.

For more information on the biography or career in music of Dr. Steven Porter please choose a category by clicking on any button on the left of your screen. You will find wide ranging topics including education, theatre, political ethics, Russia, music theory, the fine arts, over 150 published choral music works & at least 20 other published works. You will also discover that Dr. Steven Porter is the author of "One of the most unique, intelligent, and comprehensive music theory books of the modern era"...The Harmonization of the Chorale.