D. A. Blankinship's Past

The Very Very Early Years

The earliest recorded Blankinship's were Vikings who settled in the Normandy area of France. The Lord de Blenkinsopp (a Blankinship ancestor), distinguished himself as a soldier with William I (later William the Conqueror) at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and earned a large track of land and castle in the Northumberland area between England and Scotland.

The Blankinships/Blenkinsopps have lived in England for almost one thousand years and many family members live there today. The Blenkinsopp castle is located about three miles west of Haltwhistle, England, just outside the Northumberland National Park.

The Not So Early Years (Flash Forward 885 years)

David Arnold Blankinship was born at the Truesdale Hospital in Fall River, Massachusetts on December 28, 1951. His mother was an emigrant from England who traveled to the U.S. as the governess for the children of a British Admiral. Blankinship’s father, the son of a Kansas sharecropper, was a career sailor in the U.S. Navy.

As a military family, the Blankinships traveled extensively and before the young Blankinship was 14 years old, he had lived in Rhode Island, England, New Mexico, Hawaii, South Carolina, and Kansas. When Blankinship graduated high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served with submarine squadrons in South Carolina and Florida. He worked as an engineering laboratory technician, testing and certifying the acids, fuels, and oils used by submarines.

University Student

After completing his military service, Blankinship attended Pittsburg State University where he earned distinction for his academic and research achievements. He was inducted into Psi Chi, Phi Delta Kappa, The Scholastic Honor Society, and Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities. The psychology department faculty named him the Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Psychology, and the following year he was named the Outstanding Graduate Student in Psychology. The Kansas Psychological Association recognized and honored his research in small group decision-making. Blankinship graduated with honors in psychology and later earned primary certification in Rational-Emotive Therapy, awarded under the auspices of the Institute for Rational Living in New York.

While completing his doctoral-level training at Kansas State University, Blankinship was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi. He earned a Ph.D. in counseling with specializations in group work and advanced competency in multivariate statistical analyses.

The World of Work

D. A. Blankinship worked as a clinical psychologist at a state school and hospital, as a research psychologist with the U.S. Army, and as a senior associate with a management consulting group in Washington, DC.

He has worked at the University of Northern Colorado, the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and California State University, Stanislaus. During his time in higher education, D. A. Blankinship served as a director of research development, an association dean of graduate studies and research, and dean of university extended education. In these various capacities, he worked with faculty to strengthen scholarly productivity and improve classroom teaching, and he promoted student research.

Under the sponsorship of the National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Blankinship conducted research on defining and supporting academic excellence at the university level; he continues writing and speaking on this important topic.

Poverty Reduction & International Development

For the past ten years, D. A. Blankinship has worked to help end extreme poverty in Ethiopia and sub-Sahara Africa. He co-founded Praxis Ethiopia as an international alliance of educators, scientists, and entrepreneurs dedicated to community-driven poverty reduction in Ethiopia and he created The Praxis Ethiopia Foundation. The Foundation is an international publicly-supported charity dedicated to strengthening food security, improving healthcare, and promoting education in Ethiopia.

The Foundation has the endorsement of the Prime Minister and the President of Ethiopia. The biofarm systems in Ethiopia, operated under the Praxis Ethiopia model, have earned recognition by the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations.

Scholar, Editor, and Author

A prolific writer and respected scholar, D. A. Blankinship has more than 50 publications and presentations on psychology, academic excellence, and poverty reduction. He has served as the senior editor of two newsletters on research development, as a member of the editorial review board of the International Society of Research Administrators, and as the managing editor of the CSU Stanislaus Journal of Research.

D. A. Blankinship is the author of three fictional works: Phontaine’s Gifts–The Survival Legacy, an apocalyptic thriller about global devastation and the importance of simple survival technologies (based in part on his work in promoting and supporting sustainable agriculture in Ethiopia and his profound respect for libraries and books made of paper); The Scoloderus Conspiracy, a futurist geo-political thriller featuring a university professor recruited to assist the government in foiling a cunning espionage team; and the Woodcliff Anthology, a collection of eight metaphysical short stories exploring important themes in religion and ethics.