Years ago, as I watched my infant daughter trying to absorb the intricacies of the belt in her car seat, I understood a personality trait that perhaps led me to become a teacher: I like success. I don't favor any special kind, but rather the general fulfillment of potential, what the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called “the achieve of; the mastery of the thing.” Like Benjamin Franklin, another favorite of mine, I believe humans have tremendous potential, and I can think of no more appropriate or fulfilling job for me than helping them to realize that potential.

As a professor and an administrator at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, I strive to create an atmosphere in which students and colleagues can realize their potentials as readers, writers, and thinkers—and tap those potentials to serve their fellow human beings as scientists, scholars, writers, teachers, parents, and citizens.  In my work as a department chair and now dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, I have managed the daily work of advising students and faculty, compiling and reporting data, and ensuring quality and efficiency while participating in innovations designed to support the university’s mission.  An active teacher and scholar of American literature, I serve on the editorial board of the Edgar Allan Poe Review and the board of directors for the Thomas Wolfe Society.  My own recent projects include Literature and Journalism in Antebellum America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Poe in His Right Mind (under review), “The Critique of Journalism in Sister Carrie” (American Literary Realism, 2010), “Stories of Today: Rebecca Harding Davis's Investigative Fiction” (forthcoming in Journalism History), and “The Polar Regions” (forthcoming in Poe in Context).  In the area of university and community service, I have served on UNCP’s Scholars Council, QEP Committee, Student Success Steering Committee, and numerous other committees involved in faculty development, student and faculty recruitment, and faculty evaluation.

Away from campus, I enjoy running, traveling, coaching baseball, and spending time with my wife, Lisa, and our children, Essie and Will.