Welcome to my Bio page. Here is the Paul Harvey version:  

As a new member of the Hill City staff, I think it is important you know a little more about me other than I teach science. So, as the line goes, here is the REST of the story.

I grew up in Dickinson, ND. I am the oldest of 5 and have two brothers and two sisters. My youngest sister is almost 19 years younger than me, which is pretty cool. I attended Trinity High School and graduated in 1980. I then attended Dickinson State University, where I met my wife, Kay. We have been married for 39 years. We have two daughters, both of whom are married, and five grandchildren. 

My first teaching job was in Selby. There I was both an instructor and a coach. I taught there until 1991 and then went to Mobridge. I taught and coached there from 1991 to 1997. I left teaching when we moved to North Dakota and worked as an IT specialist for Farm Credit Services, then moved to the Department of Health as an IT Coordinator for Disease Control. I was hired away from the Department of Health to be a project manager for Scientific Technologies out of Tucson, AZ. I did that until we deployed three years later. After deployment, I stayed on active duty until 2018, when I returned to teaching in Bison.

Regardless of my job title, I was, and always will be, a teacher. I had the opportunity to take a course entitled pre-professional experience while in college. I was offered the opportunity to teach a geometry class for several weeks and was HOOKED. During one of my meditations, I read that the wealth of a community can be found in its youth's dreams, which is why teaching is so exciting. It is all about the excitement for the future. Students can see a bright future, even though it is not written, full of opportunity and dreams.

In parallel to being a teacher, I have coached football, basketball, golf, baseball, and weight training. Turning 60 this year has made me realize my coaching days, unless golf, are most likely done. Yes, I coached the middle school girls this year, and we had a lot of fun and found success as a team. As a coach, I committed the cardinal sin as I got close to these athletes. I guess we will have to see what next year brings as far as coaching goes. Along with coaching, along the way, I was the Junior Class advisor for four years and put on four successful proms, and was the graduation speaker for six classes in three different schools.

I mentioned there was some time outside of teaching. First was IT for Farm Credit Services. My duties outside of computer maintenance were to train producers on how to use spreadsheets to assist in managing their operations, build websites for producers, and help producers with parallel businesses, such as creating an online cattle auction site. That was going well until my National Guard commander; also the state epidemiologist, convinced me I should apply to work for him. That was when I joined the ND Department of Health as IT Coordinator. Here I helped evolve disease reporting, so the NDDoH moved from mail-in disease cards, which took place 5 to 7 days after the patient went to the doctor, to receiving electronic disease confirmation in a matter of seconds from tests run at the state lab. Because this process was built on Microsoft Access, we needed a more capable database, so we looked at an Oracle database. This led us to a company that built web applications for health, Scientific Technologies, in Tucson, AZ. After three years, we had a pretty potent product, and they hired me as a project manager to adapt this database in other locations. So I began assisting New York City, Dallas County, West Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota in disease reporting. That was until I deployed in 2007.

I deployed to Iraq as a member of the 191 Military Police. Our mission was in northeast Baghdad. We supported the surge into Sadr City, and it was a tough but successful mission. Upon our return, I was asked to stay on duty with the ND National Guard. I worked training Soldiers who were deploying, focusing on the areas of operations. After a year, I was asked to attend the Sergeant's Major Academy at Ft. Bliss, TX. I completed this school and returned to ND to run the Engineer School in Devils Lake, ND. This regional training academy had a $6.5 million budget and trained 2000 Soldiers yearly. I was blessed with a staff that, once empowered, created one of the premier training locations in the country. This led to our creating a training site in Accra, Ghana, where we shipped our instructors for two-week rotations and, in turn, trained their instructors on the art of teaching for the same two weeks. This became so successful we were asked to create similar training sites in Togo and Benin. This allowed me to work through the Ambassador in Ghana, and that opportunity gave me great insight into nation-building. After four years in the Engineer school, I went to work directly for the Adjutant General for the last two years until retiring as a Command Sergeant Major in 2018.

Along the way, I have been blessed with some recognition. In 1990, I was the NEWMAST awardee and spent three weeks with NASA at NASA Ames. In 1991 I was a Special Topics in Aerospace Research presenter in Washington, D.C. In 1993 I was the Presidential Awardee for Teaching Mathematics and Science for South Dakota. In 1994 I was a Congressional Fellow and spent three weeks with Bells Labs. Most recently, I spent a week this last summer at the Laser Interferometry Gravitational Observatory at the Hanford Site near Richland, Washington. There, teachers from the U.S., Canada, Scotland, England, France, and Germany were emersed in physics, focusing on Einsteinian gravity.

In the military, I was the Commandant at the Engineer schoolhouse for four years and was credited for 15 best practices that were put into the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. I set up leadership training with soldiers from Ghana, Togo, and Benin and made nine trips to Africa. During my service, I was awarded a Bronze Star, Federal Legion of Merit, multiple Good Conduct and Meritorious Service medals, and received the North Dakota Legion of Merit.

My time here in Hill City has been incredible. Not to sound ingenuous, but this community has something pretty special happening with its school system. I will be honest; I accepted the position because, as an outsider, I could FEEL a sense of community the moment I walked into the school for my interview. I knew within 15 minutes I wanted this position and have not once felt otherwise. I am blessed to be here and thankful every day I get to come to school and spend time with these great ambassadors of the future!