I was born in Kingston, NY, but my family made stops in Pittsburgh, PA, and Raleigh, NC, before settling in Stone Mountain, GA, a suburb of Atlanta. For high school I attended Forrest Hills Christian, where I earned letters in football, basketball, baseball, and track. During my senior year I was named Most Valuable Defensive Player for our undefeated football team, which was the 1987 Georgia Christian Athletic Association state champions, and set a school record by catching four touchdown passes in one game.
In the fall of 1988 I began my collegiate studies as a mathematics major at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. While at Liberty, I spent two summers working on the Hawaiian island of Molokai as a member of a Liberty-based summer team. During these summers we held several camps for the island youth on Molokai, a very primitive island of only a few thousand mostly native Hawaiian residents, as well as single camps on each of the more tourist-friendly islands of Kauai and Maui.
In the fall of 1992 I began my graduate studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where I completed an M.S. in Applied Mathematics in 1994 and a Ph.D. in the same field in 1997. After graduating I stayed at NC State as a visiting instructor of mathematics through 1999, during which time I was responsible for establishing a permanent technology component for the calculus sequence at the university, and wrote a book entitled Applications of Abstract Algebra with Maple with Drs. Neil Sigmon of Radford University and Ernie Stitzinger of NC State.
In the spring of 1999 I accepted a position as a cryptologic mathematician with the National Security Agency at Fort George G. Meade, MD. I held this position through the summer of 2000, at which time I re-entered academia by accepting a position as a visiting assistant professor of mathematics at the State University of New York at Oswego, a town located on the southern shore of Lake Ontario about 40 miles north of Syracuse.
I left Oswego in the fall of 2002 to accept my current position as an assistant professor of mathematics at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, where I am now co-director of the graduate program. One of my recent professional projects was writing a book entitled The Mathematics of Voting and Elections: A Hands-On Approach with Dr. Jonathan Hodge of Grand Valley State University. In July and September of 2005, Jon and I were guests on The Edge hosted by Tom Smith on WXYB in Tampa to discuss some topics related to election theory, most of which is in our book. Click here for an MP3 file of our interview that aired on July 28, and here for an MP3 file of our interview that aired on September 8.
Another of my recent professional projects was completing an expanded second edition of the book Applications of Abstract Algebra with Maple and MATLAB with Neil Sigmon and Ernie Stitzinger. More importantly, I also recently married Dr. Vicky Williams (now Dr. Vicky Klima), who also works as an assistant professor of mathematics at Appalachian State University. We live in the historic downtown district of Boone just a few steps from the campus of ASU with our two dogs, Sophie and Allie, and our two cats, Shmoopy and Shmoopy. To see some pictures from our wedding, honeymoon, vacations, house, or pets, click here.