About Me
I’ve been teaching economics for more than 30 years. This was never what I meant to do. I was a journalism student at the University of Missouri and got a second degree in economics on the side of that. Not a second major, a second degree, an overachiever for sure. I went to graduate school in economics to understand economists and to talk like a normal person. I’m pretty sure that I don’t talk like a normal person anymore, but I’ve been translating economics for literally tens of thousands of students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville since 1989.
I have a passion for economic development and have directly engaged in service projects all over the world both in the private sector and with students. I’ve organized service projects that took hundreds of students to Costa Rica and Mexico and led study abroad experiences in Hong Kong and China. Privately I’ve taken teams of volunteers to medical clinics, housing projects and other hands on economic development in Mexico, Haiti, Kenya and in many distressed parts of the United States. I’ve organized and sent groups to many more places than that. For a long time I focused on trying to save the world, on a budget. Between University groups and the private volunteer organizations, I’ve personally led more than 70 international teams and sent many more to places I’ve yet to visit. I believe deeply in connecting people. I can take people to places where they will confront things that I cannot teach them in a classroom. Get out, experience, explore, try things on, and make a difference!
On campus I taught interdisciplinary courses on Latin America and Global Problems and Human Survival. That led more than 20 years ago to senior faculty in my department deciding I should teach international economics, mostly because they didn’t want to. That sent me on a path to NASBITE International, a professional organization for people engaged in international trade. NASBITE was launching its Certified Global Business Professional credential (CGBP). I wanted to earn that, and I also thought they were going to need some help to fully implement their vision. That led to me joining the Board of Governors, eventually serving as President, and now as a Distinguished Fellow, which mostly means I work alot for free. But Distinguished Fellow is my best title (other than Nana). Along the way I started consulting with businesses in the pet industry, earned my CGBP, and started expanding my trade training efforts as a CGBP certified trainer to other industries. I’ve hosted more than 100 webinars for NASBITE and was the featured speaker at a few.
The CGBP credential is assurance of knowlege and also a commitment to continued professional development. By design, a CGBP has to know about all areas of international business, including gobal logistics/supply chain, international marketing, international management, and trade finance. The breadth is challenging. As an economist, I knew some of the trade finance, but not all of it because so much of it is practical, how you actually do business, and not the theory we teach in 300 level economics classes. I had to go learn a bunch to pass the exam.
Now I’m writing a textbook that teaches international economics in a way that works for international business and for those that want to study international relations or global policy making. It doesn’t require intermediate economic theory, and I hope hones some of the data gathering and analysis skills that people need to make business decisions. It fully addresses what people need to know for the trade finance part of the CGBP and much more. I believe it fills an unmet niche in curriculum to prepare international business professionals. I like to think of it as a guide book to everything you should know about international economics without requiring you to be an economics major. And for the occasional economics major, it will introduce you to a world of things you won’t find in a tradional international economics course.
