While most of my career has been spent in academics, I spent 3 years working as a project engineer for New England Telephone right after I graduated from college with a degree in electrical engineering. During this time I worked on a variety of projects including special services and outside plant engineering. I also served in a variety of management positions, so I obtained a good Knowledge of how the Bell System worked. This practical experience has been very valuable in advising students about career choices. While the work was challenging, I yearned for an opportunity to pursue a career in mathematics, so I enrolled at Ohio State University.

I was a graduate teaching assistant at OSU and discovered that I really enjoyed teaching, so I decided to get a Ph.D. and pursue an academic career. When I entered OSU I anticipated that I would get into applied mathematics, but I became so intrigued with group theory that I did my Ph.D. on finite simple groups working with Zvonimir Janko. I completed my thesis earlier than anticipated, and so I planned to spend a year as an instructor at OSU. However, an opportunity came up at the last minute for a tenure track position at Allegheny College, and in a tight job market I jumped at it.

I spent the next ten years teaching at Allegheny College, and it was a wonderful experience. Its at Allegheny where I really learned to teach, and also learned how a successful department works. I enjoyed working with undergraduate students at all levels, and also worked with several students on research projects. Several of my students from Allegheny went on to get Ph.D.'s either in group theory or some other area of modern algebra. I also continued to do research in group theory, although with the isolated location of Allegheny and no e-mail, it was difficult to keep up with the most recent results. I also became concerned about directing students more toward applied math. So I successfully obtained an NSF grant to enhance my background in applied math for a year while on sabbatical. I spent the year at Boulder where I worked with John Maybee, who became my close friend and collaborator from 1979 until his death in 1997. During that time I studied applied graph theory and combinatorial matrix theory with applications to large matrix models and communication networks. I then returned to Allegheny to share this with my students, but I had fallen in love with Colorado. So when the opportunity to join in building a program in applied math at University of Colorado at Denver presented itself in 1981, I was thrilled by the chance to move to Colorado. It was difficult to leave such a good position, but professionally it was the best move of my life.

For those of you only familiar with our department in recent years, you would be shocked as I was to see the state of the department in 1981. There was a small faculty left from the departmental turmoil of the 70's, essentially no modern program for majors and only 6 active students in a small graduate program. Three of us who were new were given the challenge of building a strong program in applied math at both the undergraduate and graduate level essentially from scratch. Also, one of the new faculty left in the second year,so as the senior member I had to assume the major leadership role. It was a daunting task, but there were incredible opportunities. We were also given new positions, so in the eighties we were able to recruit the core of our current faculty. In 1984 I became chair of the department, and in 1986 we got approval for our Ph.D. in applied math. Serving 6 years as chair of the department was probably the highlight of my career, and it was a special opportunity to work with the many faculty who joined our department at that time to build the best program on our campus. It was also an opportunity for me to develop my research program in applied graph theory and combinatorial matrix theory and to begin working with Ph.D. students. While serving as chair was a wonderful professional opportunity for me, it also took a personal tole on me and on the opportunity to teach and do research. So in 1990 I stepped aside to let Bill Briggs take over as chair. While the 80's presented the best professional opportunity of my life, the 90's presented the most enjoyable time for teaching, doing research, and taking on selected important service assignments such as chairing the search for a new dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences during the academic year 1998-1999, and chairing the search for a new chair of Computer Science during the academic year 1999-2000.

Somehow those increased administrative responsibilities at the end of the 90's led to significent administrative responsibilities in the department at the turn of the century. First I took over as chair of the graduate committee, and led an effort to significantly improve our graduate program. This included increased support, reduced teaching loads for our teaching assistants, and more extensive recruiting at the national and international level. At this time I started the campus wide PhD Committee, and we finally solved the funding issues for out-of-state students. As a consequence, we now have a much more diverse graduate program with many students from around the country and several foreign countries. In 2001 I took over as interim chair while we conducted a national search for a new chair, and this one year assignment stretched to two years. Finally in the academic year 2003-2004 I was able to take a much needed sabbatical. During that year I was able to visit several universities around the country and in Australia and New Zealand giving talks and interacting with other graph theorists. Since then I have settled back into the role of director of the graduate program.

I have been fortunate to have eleven talented Ph.D. students graduate since 1988, all of whom are currently working either in academics or industry. I have just recently started to work with some new PhD students. While retirement is in the not too distant future, I look forward to the next few years of teaching, research, and working with graduate students.