I grew up in the Daytona Beach, Florida area. When I enrolled at Florida State University, I lived a typical undergraduate lifestyle until a profound conversion experience following my first year. I started attending the United Methodist campus ministry at FSU. Because I didn’t grow up in the church, there was some intimidation with Sunday services and Bible studies. Everyone knew more than me. By God’s grace I pressed on, discovered a generous community, and devoured everything I could about my newfound Christian faith. At this campus ministry, I also met my wife. Over the next few years, we would journey to Catholicism. For my wife it was a feeling of deep peace, the real presence of the Eucharist, and a calling from Our Mother. On the other hand, everything that excited her was a giant question mark for me. Gradually, and then suddenly, my heart and mind changed. On Easter 2014 we found our home in the Catholic church.

In 2011 I started in the Economics Ph.D. program at Florida State – I didn’t apply anywhere else. My wife was in the College of Medicine at FSU and I had already started working closely with Mark Isaac, an experimental economist at FSU. Our joint work spanned different topics but mostly concentrated on public goods provision and institutions that help overcome free-riding. I left Tallahassee a couple years into my program and completed my dissertation in Greenville, SC away from the nest. That was where my wife was completing her pediatric residency. It was during that period we converted to Catholicism and I became a father to three lovely little girls.

How I came to graduate from Florida State and now be on the faculty is a long, circuitous, and barely believable story. But, I believe it was providential. I am now a lecturer in the Department of Economics at FSU where I teach a rotation of classes like public finance, health, intermediate micro, and economics of religion (academic profile here).

As a teaching faculty, I am always on the hunt for new and better ways to teach and engage students. I try to keep up with the latest pedagogy, technology, etc. In terms of research, while research is not part of my job description anymore, I still have some irons in the fire. For example, I just submitted a paper on the 1960s U.S. Supreme Court religious exercise cases and public school enrollment. This is part of a broader project on values and education. I am also working on a field experiment related to how low-income individuals make labor market decisions when those decisions can cause large losses in public assistance.
 
In terms of mentoring, I am happy to talk at both personal and professional levels. At the professional level, my expertise as a researcher and editor are in experimental and behavioral economics. Because of my teaching position I also think a lot about how to best teach students. If you are interested in pursuing a teaching position, want to talk about teaching, or experimental work, we should connect. On a personal level, I also know how difficult it can be to balance competing commitments – especially in a dual career household with a number of children (we’re expecting our fourth daughter in July 2021!). If that comes up in conversation, I’m happy to talk about that too.