My undergraduate years were spent at the local university, Old Dominion, where I majored in history but spent most of my time in English and linguistics courses (and, when not working, on the basketball court!). My interest in linguistics was sparked by attending the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of Oklahoma in 1976, and I decided to pursue graduate studies in that field. However, after realizing that my real interests lay elsewhere. I settled on the Masters of International Business Studies program at the University of South Carolina (now part of the the University's IMBA programs).

One of the attractive features of the M.I.B.S.'s program was its foreign internship. After a summer of language studies and a year of business school, I spent 8 months in Germany working at IBM Deutschland headquarters in Sindelfingen, just outside Stuttgart (that was the first real "winter" I experienced--I skiied and skated for the first time). Upon my return, and completion of the program, I began looking for work. My career plan had stabilized a bit: I decided to work in international banking for five years, and then pursue a Ph.D. in economics.

My interest in economics had been growing for some time. As an undergraduate history major, I had become interested in the role that the "economic way of thinking" played in modern thought--primarily by reading Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers and subsequently Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and some of Karl Marx's work. As a graduate student in international business, I had also become interested in development issues, especially the interplay between global markets and local institutions/culture. Always one to think historically and philosophically about issues, I began to read more widely in economic history, economic ethics, and Christian social thought.

The next career move requires a step backward first. While in Germany, I spent several weekends and the Christmas holiday at Schloss Mittersill, a castle in the Salzburg region of Austria. During a break from skiing one day, I commented to those with me that the scene before us had to be one of the most beautiful on earth. Someone remarked: "well, yes, but you obviously haven't seen Vancouver -- there we have mountains on one side and the ocean on the other!" Fascinated, I determined to keep my eye out for jobs in the Pacific Northwest. When I spotted a job teaching in a business program at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, I applied and eventually got the job.

Teaching at Trinity Western brought me to Canada (a typical "American," I knew almost nothing about my northern neighbours except that they were all "nice" and some of them spoke French), and introduced me to the academic career I had been thinking about for some time. However, I still needed the Ph.D., and shortly after arriving in British Columbia began looking for a place to do further study. My interest in ethical issues in economics led me to Professor A.M.C. Waterman at St. John's College, a part of the University of Manitoba. Anthony agreed to supervise my study of a topic in religious ethics and economic thought within Manitoba's economics program. Because my academic background did not contain enough economics, I spent my last year at Trinity Western balancing a full-time teaching load with part-time study at nearby Simon Fraser University. In the summer of 1984 I moved from British Columbia to the prairies, and began doctoral studies.

My curriculum vitae provides the details of my professional career since the move to Winnipeg: Fellowships at St. John's College, an award-winning dissertation on the Chicago economist Frank H. Knight, subsequent reseach funded by grants from SSHRCC and the Earhart Foundation, etc. From 1989-2003 I lived in Camrose, Alberta, where I taught economics at Augustana University College (now the Augustana Faculty, University of Alberta). Some of the highlights of my fourteen years at Augustana were: learning a lot by teaching a variety of electives across the economics discipline; the chance to teach an interdisciplinary course with several different professors (Professors Giesen, Janz, Mibrandt, and Mundel); participation in the University College's first Development Studies program in Ghana (Spring 1994); CIRLA conferences in Banff in 1996, 1998 and 2002; visits to speak at numerous universities; the opportunity to visit Moscow in the summer of 1999 with Eh.Net; and the family opportunities that living in a small center like Camrose presented.

In the spring of 2002 I accepted a new position at James Madison College, a liberal arts college of public affairs at Michigan State University. Teaching at James Madison presents a new challenge: the opportunity to bring economic thought into conversation with political thought in the context of the Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy field and the political economy specialization.

During the summer of 2005, I had the opportunity to undertake research on Robert Malthus as a Julian Simon Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. You can read about the summer in the archives of my blog: The Skeptical Liberal.