Despite being bred, born and raised in New York/New Jersey, I am not overly in-your-face, and I do pronounce my "er"s. However, I am always happy to express a divergent opinion, but I am equally happy to admit that there is a remote possibility that I might be wrong in a dispute (it has now been documented to have occurred at least five times).
I received my Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Michigan in 1975. I don’t like to advertise the softness of my degree, but here I am spilling my guts, and going public with my dabblings in the Dark Side. Then I bought a van, picked up my girlfriend who was then in Wisconsin (and is now my wife but no longer in Wisconsin) and we headed west on I-80. After many detours, we ran out of USA in San Francisco, where we stayed for a few weeks, and then decided we were into a more rural existence and ended up in Marcola, OR. We stayed in Oregon for about six years, got married, and made 2 babies, who are now very old. Concurrently, I learned some Biology and Chemistry, and fly-fishing, all while working as a research assistant in a zebrafish developmental biology laboratory. I decided to pursue my interest in biology, and entered the graduate program in ecology at the University of Minnesota and received my degree in 1987 my dissertation investigated the behavioral and physiological ecology of dragonflies. I worked for two years as a visiting professor at Carleton College, before coming to Radford. People down here deny that this is the South, but given the other places I've lived, this is definitely the South. People are different down here, but then so am I.
My general approach to teaching and doing science is to act like a 2 year old (which is not much of an act for me), and to continue to ask questions that usually begin with the word “Why”? Sometimes I find out some answers, either from my students, or from my fish or spiders or dragonflies, but usually I end up with more questions than answers.
That doesn't bother me at all.
Here is my family. I like them a lot.
Alison is next to me, and Jed is on the end - both of the kids are surrounding Cindy, who shares responsibility with me for creating them.