I was born and raised in upstate New York in the town of Vestal. My family eventually relocated to Banner Elk, North Carolina where I met my wife, Jessica. We have four children and live in Boone.
I came to Christ as a young child. My faith has always been very important to me. My family attends Faith Baptist Church in Linville (25 minutes from Boone up Hwy 105). It's a small church, so I wear many hats. I am a deacon and assistant treasurer. I also teach adult Sunday school. My wife is a musician. She coordinates the music and often provides music for the church. If you are looking for a good church closer to Boone, I have good friends and colleagues who attend Alliance Bible Fellowship and Mt. Vernon Baptist Church (both are excellent churches).
Other than kindergarten at a public school and a just over two years of elementary school at a private Christian school, CBCA, I was homeschooled by my mom. While finishing highschool, I took some classes at Lees-McRae College. My interest in mathematics (and computer science) really blossomed at this time. I owe a lot to Dr. John Alsup for his excellent instruction. I also took some classes at Appalachian State University. I especially enjoyed Computer Science I and Artificial Intelligence with Dr. Alice McRae.
After finishing highschool, I went off to Bob Jones University where I majored in Math and minored in Computer Science. Although I only attended BJU for two and a half years, the university has had a big impact on my life. BJU has many very intelligent, talented, and Godly faculty. I greatly enjoyed my time there.
In May of 2005, I graduated from North Carolina State University with my Ph.D. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. minor in Computer Science. My Ph.D. advisor was Kailash C. Misra. My co-advisor was Haisheng Li who is a professor at Rutgers University in Camden. Several current or former App State Mathematical Sciences faculty attended NCSU while I was there. In particular, Vicky (Williams) Klima and I have the same Ph.D. advisor (Kailash C. Misra). Katie Mawhinney, was a classmate in some topology and set theory classes at NCSU. Also, Jason Osborne and I took multiple classes together.
After finishing my Ph.D. at NCSU, I spent three years as a post-doc at Rutgers University (the State University of New Jersey) in their Math Department. I ended up coauthoring a paper with Christopher Sadowski who (after finishing his Ph.D. at Rutgers) joined the faculty at Ursinus College.
In the Fall of 2008, I joined the faculty of the Mathematical Sciences Department at Appalachian State University where I am now a Professor and Assistant Chair of our department.
I love walking and hiking and traveling. I also love reading and learning about mathematics. While my interests in mathematics are wide, I enjoy algebra the most. I've also held a long interest in the foundations of mathematics, topology, and category theory. I keep an embarrassingly ugly book blog mostly to remind myself of bits about the books I've read.