General Background Information

1975-1977: United States Naval Academy

Yeah, you can see this working out. Played football until I scrambled my brain (one too many concussions), spent a lot of time marching off demerits and spent many months confined to quarters. The time I spent at sea on a Tank Landing Ship (U.S.S. Harlan County, LST 1196, The Screaming Eagle) with 800 marines blowing their breakfast over the rail convinced me "this isn't what I want to be when I grow up". Took early retirement and transferred to the University of Alabama.

1977: Mobile Infirmary, Mobile, Alabama

This is it, my only clinical experience aside from experiencing my own surgeries. I worked as a phlebotomist. Patients would see me come in their room and skip the vampire jokes to go straight to the big scary man with a needle jokes - "I was expecting Dracula but they sent Frankenstein instead".

1980: B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Alabama

Bear Bryant was the football coach, I was in a fraternity (no longer playing football, instead actually experiencing sitting in the stands with a date, tailgating, etc.), we won all the time, went to the Sugar Bowl every year (New Orleans on New Year's Eve with 'Bama playing for the national title the next day), won a couple of national championships, and you can fill in the rest.

1980-1987: The Lost Years

Lab Tech work and miscellaneous adventures, including but not limited to playing rugby, painting houses, starting a cleaning business, dropping out of grad school, running a reproduction research lab in Athens, GA (yep, lots of rabbits to take care of but I also heard some great live music at the 40 Watt Club), working as a dog catcher, and taking one last shot at getting the band off the ground (or at least thinking about getting a band off the ground, but I'll tell you, a lack of talent is a killer obstacle). And then I decided to grow up and go back to school to finish what I started.

1993: Ph.D. in Experimental Pathology from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine

Dissertation topic: The role of inflammation in macrophage-derived foam cell formation - atherosclerosis as an inflammatory process.

And my beautiful, brilliant daughters were born, one in 1989 and the other in 1992. In spite of all that time I spent in the lab.

1993-1995: Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Pathology at the School of Medicine, UNC-Chapel Hill, and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center

Research interests: Tumor suppressor genes, Wilm's tumor, breast cancer, neuroblastoma

1995 – 1997: Molecular Genetics Program, Center for Cancer Treatment and Research, Richland Memorial Hospital

Research Interest: Molecular Immunology - The use of molecular and cellular biology techniques combined with computational chemistry and molecular modeling to study the role of HLA polymorphism in allorecognition, including graft-vs-host disease, graft rejection, and immunotherapy.

1989-1993, 1995-1997: Adjunct Faculty, Science Department, Midlands Technical College

1997 – present: Full-time Faculty, Science Department, Midlands Technical College

Classes Taught: Anatomy and Physiology (Biology 110, 112, 210 and 211), Introductory Biology (Biology 100), Biological Science I and II (Biology 101, 102), Medical Terminology (AHS 102), Microbiology (Biology 225), Pathology (Biology 230), Freshman Seminar (Col 105)

2001-2007: Department Chair, Science

2007 - ?: Back to the classroom on a full-time basis.

Somewhere in the middle of all that I managed to get married again to someone who is far prettier than I am, has a lot more sense than I do, has a compassionate, tender heart, and has a lot more spontaneous fun than anyone I've ever met. We've got her two sons and my two daughters and some dogs and cats and other creatures all living together and I'm hoping this back to the classroom deal is going to let me spend more time in the middle of all that. So that's pretty much the deal, and if you happen to know any of my children please be kind to them because I embarrass them terribly. Especially my eldest, who started college right here at MTC in the Fall 2007 semester.

And here are some pictures of them