Charles Michael Dugan III (1959-2024) In Memoriam
In Memoriam
Santa Barbara lost a valued teacher and scholar in Charles Michael Dugan III, who passed in December 2024. His life embodied deep intellectual curiosity, dignity and integrity.
Born to Charles M. Dugan Jr. and Shirley D. Dugan, Charles Michael Dugan III graduated from Eastern Lebanon County High School where he was a member of the Library Club and a photographer for the school newspaper. A National Merit Scholarship Finalist with one of the highest SAT scores, Charles graduated from Penn State University before transferring to the graduate program in psychological sciences at UCSB, where under a Regents Fellowship, he worked with eminent scholars in the field of cognition. His research focus was in Human Computer Interaction, Human Reasoning, and Problem Solving. Upon graduation, he joined the psychology faculty at Santa Barbara City College from 1996 until 2024. Dugan was a member of Association for Psychological Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and a reviewer for the Journal of Memory and Cognition.
Dr. Dugan taught a wide range of courses, including research methods and statistics, cognition, social psychology, and introduction to the psychological sciences. In an era of distraction, with students challenged by innumeracy, math phobia, and skills gaps, Charles was patient with students, easing their fears and self-created barriers to learning, while acknowledging their strengths, uniqueness and humanity. Charles engaged with his colleagues, contributing thoughtful questions and proposing potential solutions and taking on special projects for the department, including building supplemental self-paced instructional modules to help students whose weaker backgrounds and skills inhibited their readiness for more advanced work. Like a child taking apart a Christmas gift to understand the mechanisms operating inside, Charles was deeply interested in the ways students reasoned and learned. He valued the elegance, logic and statistical reasoning behind complex concepts, and enjoyed showing others how learning could transfer to other situations. His expertise in instructional design and human-computer interface benefitted students and the college when the pandemic required a rapid transition to remote learning.
Charles was always an avid reader; he liked science fiction, collected comic books, and was always interested in photography, starting with a makeshift darkroom for developing film in his childhood home’s basement to the school newspaper photographer and eventually digital cameras. Charles enjoyed conversations in Esperanto, and was a principled vegan. Others characterized Charles as unique, kind, compassionate, highly intelligent, quirky, authentic and real, and a trusted friend. Former colleagues recalled: “I remember him as being completely dedicated to the students and truly found joy in teaching”; “I will remember his wide expressive eyes when he was fired up about a topic and how genuine he was”. A long-time friend and colleague revealed: “I counted him as a true friend, one with high integrity and exceptional intelligence. When I experienced tough times in grad school, he was there to support me with kindness and perspective. When I was puzzling about how to teach a course he gave reasoned advice, which I invariably followed. He made me laugh, often. … I wish the world had been kinder to Charles. I always thought he deserved more than he had been given. He was so smart and thoughtful. The many students he taught received an excellent education. I know many were grateful.” Another instructor recounted: “Some years ago I had a middle-aged returning student who had little academic confidence. She wanted to be a psych major but was terrified of having to take statistics. Charles was so helpful to her that she not only passed the course but eventually became our psychology student of the year.”
Charles is survived by his family members. His mother Shirley, sisters Kathy and Dorothy and brother James, reside in PA.
