|
|
|
|
|
o
I am currently an associate professor of math
and department chair at Southern Utah University,
recently ranked one of the Top 10
Universities in the Nation for quality and value by Consumer's Digest. Right
after my Ph.D. we went to Arkansas State
University in |
|
o We have a PDE Seminar group at Southern Utah University. We have submitted another paper at present. |
|
o Math has got to be the best subject to teach. I think it is so great because it is not nearly as much memorization as it is developing abilities, logical processes and techniques to apply to problems to be solved. Most sciences enjoy similar advantages, but I don’t have to spend tons of time putting together labs! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
o
I am married to the former Tifani Acord of |
|
o Here are some pictures of the family, which are in great need of updating!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
o Most of my spare time is taken up by spending time with my wife and children, including fixing bikes, cleaning up constantly, doing yard work and gardening, fixing up around the house and driving kids to and then watching their many sports and music activities. |
|
o My family and I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; that’s right, we are Mormons. I have a passion for good religious literature, whether it be from our church or about religion in general, including pseudepigraphal works, Gospels both canonical and apocryphal, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. I believe that Christianity is a dynamic belief: That is, it’s not a set of rules that we are to follow, but a way to change our lives by changing the spirit inside to move toward the perfection Jesus told us to seek. I have currently been called to work with the 16 and 17-yr-old boys in our church unit, and I love these guys to death. I never want to lose this job, but we always lose them eventually and are called to use our time, without pay, to fulfill other “churchy duties*.” (*The line churchy duties comes from the most important and intelligent movie of the last 350 years: Nacho Libre.) |
|
o I like to jog, play basketball, and lift weights. I also love to play catch with anything: football, baseball or Frisbee (sorry, novelty flying disc). All my kids like throwing, too, so I almost never have to throw things up in the air to myself. I have coached my kids’ soccer, baseball, and basketball teams lots of times. I am in the process of trying to motivate myself to go another round of coaching for Luke, but hope to restrict myself to the sport I like best: the one I played in high school and am therefore actually qualified to coach. I speak of the greatest sport, that of basketball. It is very exciting to be able to live vicariously through my successful boys’ athletics given that our varsity high-school basketball record (Payson High School, 1983-84 season) was 3-17. (We had a coach that took us fearlessly and weirdly on to those three victories that were more than his skills deserved!) Cameron plays basketball and high-jumps in track, while Ryan plays football and basketball. |
|
o
I enjoy being in the outdoors, to fish, camp,
or just enjoy nature. If I could only do this with my bed, my fan, hot
showers and indigestion-free, it would be even better. There is no better
place for outdoor fun than |
|
o I love reading, and when I don't have time to open up a book listening to a book on mp3 suits me fine (you have got to check out Librivox for hundreds on hundreds of public domain books read by volunteers!). I am a fanatic of religious literature, especially of the ancient Christian genre (my favorite: The Shepherd of Hermas) and classics. All the best stuff is there: The greatest minds from the past. When one can read ancient religious literature or F. Dostoevsky, J. Joyce, J. Hardy, Conrad, E.M. Forster, L. Tolstoy, M. Twain, H. Melville, W. S. Maugham, P.S. Buck, O. Wells, B. Stoker, J. Steinbeck or M. Shelley – or even J. London, E.R. Burroughs, E.E. Smith, L.E. Modesitt, Jr. (who lives in this same locale, Cedar City, Utah!), H.G. Wells, Stephen King or Dean Koontz – it is hard to be patient with the others, or especially with television. I wish I could find a show that I thought was worth watching besides The Simpsons and sports, but it’s too risky: I can’t stand the fifty-point drop in IQ when I turn on a reality television show, or the 100-pt drop (leaving me with the IQ of a house fern) when I hear the canned adult laughter in Disney Channel or Nick pre-teenie shows that my 11-yr-old likes. I am, like 14,566,270 other Americans, now working on the definitive American novel. |
|
o Some of my favorite links follow:
|
|
|
