Originally published in the Ottawa Herald, 11/29/2018
Since joining Ottawa University this August, I have heard a lot about the connection between the University and the Ottawa and Franklin County communities. I hope that this column will be a positive contribution to that relationship. In this first installment, I will introduce myself, my role at Ottawa University, and give a brief preview of the issues I hope to discuss every other week in this column.
I was born and raised in southeast Kansas and graduated from Chanute High School in 2005. My father’s family had been farmers in the area since the 1800s and my mother’s father was a country preacher. In the fall of 2005 I entered Kansas State University and graduated in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in finance. The market for finance grads was pretty thin on the heels of the housing market crash and financial crisis going on at the time, so I considered other options.
Graduate school was my choice and I began my second 4-year term at Kansas State in 2009 as an economics student. During this time I met my wife (who is a native of Ottawa), got married, and had our first child. I completed the PhD in 2013 and we moved to Corpus Christi, Texas. My 4 years as a student in K-State’s Agricultural Economics department had prepared me well to combine my love for rural life and my interest and education in economics to Texas A&M’s Agricultural Economics programs. In Corpus Christi, I served as a professor and Extension economist working primarily with farmers and other agribusinesses along the Texas coast.
After a few years in Texas, during which time our second child was born, we took an opportunity to move back to a college town. I joined the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Georgia in 2016, again serving as an Extension economist and professor. We enjoyed our time there and I gained valuable experience that I continue to use today.
In the summer of 2018 I ran across an ad for a job at Ottawa University. The Gwartney Institute had been recently established earlier in the year by economics professor Dr. Russ McCullough. The Institute is named after a Kansas native and Ottawa University graduate, James Gwartney who is an economics professor at Florida State University. Dr. Gwartney has built a reputation in the profession as an innovator, best known for creating the Economic Freedom of the World Index. This Index uses publicly-available data to rank countries around the world based on things like the ease of starting a business, the stability of the currency, and other economic indicators.
Now that you know my history and my current work, you’re probably wondering what I’ll be addressing in this column. As the title suggests, I hope to use my training in economics to shed light on economic and government policy issues that matter to the residents of Ottawa and Franklin County. These will include, but not be limited to, taxation, agriculture, transportation, education, and many other economic and policy issues at the state and national levels that affect life in Franklin County.
Though I have lived far from home the past five years, I have been watching a lot of the economic issues going on in Kansas such as the tax debate and the health of Kansas’ major industries. This will inform my perspective on current economic issues and enrich my commentary. I hope you find this column interesting and thought-provoking. I look forward to your feedback on my column as well; you can email me at levi.russell@ottawa.edu. Ottawa is a great community and I’m proud to be a part of it.
Dr. Levi A. Russell is the Gwartney Institute Professor of Economic Education and Research at Ottawa University
No comments:
Post a Comment