I was born in Kingston, NY, and my family also spent time in Pittsburgh, PA, and Raleigh, NC, before settling in Stone Mountain, GA, a suburb of Atlanta.  For high school I attended Forrest Hills in Avondale Estates, GA, where I played football and basketball.  During my senior year I was defensive MVP for our undefeated football team, which was the 1987 GCAA eight-man football state champions, and set a school record (and did my best Al Bundy!) by catching four touchdown passes in one game.

In 1988 I began my collegiate studies as a mathematics major, and completed a B.S. in mathematics in 1991.  While in college I spent two summers working on a service team based on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, a primitive island of only a few thousand mostly native Hawaiian residents.  During these summers we offered several week-long overnight camps for children on Molokai, as well as week-long overnight camps for children on the nearby islands of Kauai and Maui.

In 1992 I began my graduate studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where I completed an M.S. in 1994 and a Ph.D. in 1997, both in applied mathematics.  After graduating I stayed at NC State as a visiting instructor for two years, and wrote a book entitled Applications of Abstract Algebra with Maple with Drs. Neil Sigmon of Radford University and Ernie Stitzinger of NC State, which was published by CRC Press in 2000.  Neil, Ernie, and I completed an expanded second edition of this book, entitled Applications of Abstract Algebra with Maple and MATLAB, which was published by CRC Press in 2007.  We then completed a further-expanded third edition, now entitled Applied Abstract Algebra with Maple and MATLAB, which was published by CRC Press in 2016.

I left NC State in 1999 to become a cryptologic mathematician at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, MD.  I stayed at the NSA until 2000, when I became a visiting assistant professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, a town on the southern shore of Lake Ontario about 40 miles north of Syracuse.  Then in 2002 I became an assistant professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, where I am now a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, director of the First Year Seminar Program, director of the Common Reading Program, and a member of the Honors College faculty.  While at Appalachian I wrote a book entitled Cryptology: Classical and Modern, with Maplets with Dr. Neil Sigmon, which was published by CRC Press in 2012.  Neil and I completed an expanded second edition of this book, now entitled Cryptology: Classical and Modern, which was published by CRC Press in 2019.

While at Appalachian I also wrote a book entitled The Mathematics of Voting and Elections: A Hands-On Approach with Dr. Jon Hodge of St. Edward's University, which was published by the American Mathematical Society in 2005, and translated into Russian and published under the title Математика Выборов ("Election Mathematics") by the Moscow Center for Continuous Mathematical Education in 2007.  Jon and I completed an expanded second edition of this book, still entitled The Mathematics of Voting and Elections: A Hands-On Approach, which was published by the American Mathematical Society in 2018.  Jon and I have twice been guests on The Edge, hosted by Tom Smith on WXYB in Tampa, FL, to discuss our book.  Click here for audio from our first appearance, and here for audio from our second appearance.

In 2005 I married Dr. Vicky Klima (née Williams), who is the Interim Dean of the Honors College at Appalachian, and also a professor in the mathematical sciences department.  Our son Marshall joined us in 2009, and our son Jackson made us a family of four in 2011.  We live happily ever after with our dogs Arya and Dempsey just a short walk from Appalachian's main campus and Boone's historic downtown district.  Click here to see some family pictures.