Sherwin Steffin

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Sherwin A. Steffin is an American educational software designer and best known for founding software publisher Edu-Ware Services.

After earning a bachelor's degree in experimental psychology, Steffin served as a detached street gang worker in Detroit during the late 1950s and early 1960s. He then spent seven years teaching junior high school while pursuing a master's degree in instructional technology. Steffin went on to serve as a district media director for a suburban Chicago school district, was Assistant Director of the Division of Instructional Systems Development at Northeastern University for six years, spent a short time developing instructional television at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, New York, and then moved to Los Angeles, California to accept a position as a senior research analyst at UCLA. While working at UCLA, Steffin purchased an Apple II computer to assist with research he was conducting, and in his spare time he wrote Compu-Read, a speed-reading program that was originally published by Programma International.

After being laid off from UCLA in the spring of 1979, he founded Edu-Ware Services with Steven Pederson, a radio broadcasting major who Steffin met while serving as faculty advisor to the campus radio station. Believing that schools were fostering convergent thinking, Steffin's goal was to create computer aided instruction that would equally stress divergent thinking.

One year after selling the company to Management Sciences America in 1983, Steffin filed a lawsuit against MSA, claiming it violated securities laws in making fraudulent representations to Edu-Ware’s stocksholders in order to buy the latter’s stock and for the promise of future payments not materialized. Steffin went on to start a new company, BrainPower.

BrainPower developed statistical and text analysis software for university and government customers. In Business for seven years, it was forced to close in 1991, as a result of litigation from a former product developer.

From then until 1998, Steffin worked as an independent contractor, performing data and text analysis for a variety of customers. In 1998, he took a position with Earthlink, Inc., a major Internet Service Provider. For a short period, he worked as a Technical Support agent, and then was transferred to the position of Senior Data Analyst, Telecommunications Department. He continued in that position until April, 2003, when he was laid off as a part of a mass Reduction in Force, affecting some 3,000 employees.

He is currently semi-retired, operating an online tutoring service.

[edit] References

Tommervik, Allen (May 1981). "Exec Edu-Ware". Softalk: 4, 6, 19.
(October 1983) "MSA Acquires Edu-Ware". Softalk for the IBM Personal Computer: 131.
"Management Science was sued for $11.5 Million", Los Angeles Times, 1984-9-28.