Mike Crupi/THE POST Charles J. Ping, trustee professor of philosophy and education, spent much of his childhood living near maximum security prisons because his father worked laying out and operating prison hospitals.

For Charles J. Ping, home has taken many forms.

The professor emeritus, trustee professor of philosophy and education and former president of Ohio University has called many places home, from Alma College in Michigan, where he served as a professor of philosophy from 1958 through 1966, to Southern Africa, where he completed a Fulbright scholarship in 1995.

But perhaps one of Ping's more unusual homes is the time he spent at Alcatraz prison, the former maximum security prison off the coast of San Francisco active from 1936-1963.

Ping moved to Alcatraz at age 5 when his father, a registered nurse and pharmacist, was assigned to lay out and open its hospital facilities.

Because of its island location, key faculty members lived on Alcatraz itself, next to the prison and separate from the rest of the world.

But for Ping and the close to 50 other children living on the island, Alcatraz was not a prison. It was home.

"It's like being in a small town. You create a community of friends," he said.

Instead, Alcatraz was a place full of cliffs and fishing docks, which Ping said were his favorite parts of living on the island.

During his time there, Ping's only contact with the mainland was by the one boat that went from island to San Francisco, which he took to get to and from school each day.

Because he and his family moved to the island two months before the first prisoner arrived, Ping said he had no contact with the criminals.

But Alcatraz was not Ping's only prison living experience.

"Alcatraz is a footnote to my childhood," he said.

Later, Ping lived at another maximum security prison on Terminal Island, Cali., then to Atlanta's maximum security prison while his father continued his prison hospital work.

Since his time in Alcatraz, Ping has visited the prison once with his wife, but he said he keeps his childhood in the past.

"It's a piece of long ago history," he said.

Instead, Ping said he would rather focus his life on his present home and life at OU, where he has lived since serving as its 44th president from 1975-1994.

He now spends time helping students experience the world the way he has.

He serves on the board for the Council for International Education Exchange, a study abroad program that oversees the international exchange of 25,000 to 30,000 high school and university students yearly.

His work on the Fulbright Scholars Board, which sends students and academic professionals abroad for research and study, is another way Ping works to send students to different homes abroad.

He also serves as the director of the Manasseh Cutler Scholars program, a merit scholarship program that offers its recipients a full scholarship for tuition, room and board and offers extra summer programs for its recipients. As part of the program, students are involved with a study abroad or internship opportunity after their junior year.

Students are chosen by their high schools for the program, Ping said. When fully implemented, the program will have 200 Cutler scholars.

Ping also is actively involved in The Charles J. Ping Institute for the Teaching of the Humanities, created and named after Ping in 1992.

The institute focuses on promoting humanities education for both high school and university students by bringing the teachers together to discuss aspects of the liberal arts, he said.

But after his retirement from the OU presidency, Ping returned to his favorite home in the classroom, teaching philosophy.

"I'm doing exactly what I want to do," he said. "I intended to finish my career back in the classroom."