Retired in 1999
Spouse: Linda
2 Children
Info update 10/25/2024

Following graduation from UMD with a degree in History, Political Science and Art, I taught for several years and completed two graduate degrees in Educational Administration. I also served seven years in the US Army Reserve departing as a SFC tank commander. (The perfect vehicle for driving in Rome Italy rush hour traffic.)

After my active duty Army experience I working for the Minnesota Department of Employment Services and resumed my career as an educator. I was a college vice president at Southwest Technical College in Wisconsin and a college president at Wisconsin Indianhead Community Technical College. This is a four campus college (one campus in Superior Wisconsin) with enrollment of 5,500 full time students and about 28,000 continuing education students. After 15 years in Wisconsin, we returned to Minnesota in 1984 where I was employed as a special assistant to the Chancellor of the Minnesota Technical Colleges where I served as director of research, policy and planning and later as director of academic programs with the merged enterprise known as MnSCU.

My last assignment in education began in 1995 with an appointment by the University of Minnesota, MnSCU and the Minnesota Department of Education to lead a statewide project to create the virtual university and virtual career center of Minnesota. This enterprise is now known as the ISEEK and has over 55,000 students. The exhilarating aspect of this experience was developing and preserving consensus between the four independent systems of higher education in Minnesota and also insuring that each of the 200 colleges and universities became an active participant of the venture. This was somewhat difficult since it had never been done before involving all institution of higher learning in a state. The UK also initiated virtual education in 1995. Today we have hundreds of academic majors on line and thousands of courses available to students anytime and anyplace in the world.

I was fortunate enough to retire in 1999 at age 54 and following the University's practice with executives, was hired as a consultant to MnSCU, the Minnesota Department of Education and the U of M. I love this freedom and limited professional activity and continue to direct, research and publish outcomes of Minnesota Future Work which is designed to keep the presidents, deans and staff of MnSCU aware of emerging trends in higher education, the employment sector, demographics and developing business trends and needs. Some of our work can be viewed at http://www.iseek.org/news/trends.html

My wife Linda and I have been married since 1968 and we have lived in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We have two daughters. One daughter is married and lives in Prior Lake Minnesota and works as a senior executive with Verizon responsible for direction of new corporation worldwide strategies and plans. Heather retired in 2018 and is now a world traveler along with her husband Bill. Our youngest daughter was a principal software designer with Amazon and is now the CTO of a new software company and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Travel is one of our interests and each year we try to spend time in different locations around the world. Without writing a travelogue we enjoy all of Europe and western Asia, Central America and South America. We especially love Venice Italy, Istanbul Turkey, Iceland any of the Greek islands, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Bruges Belgium and of course almost any place in South America. With my wife Linda's retirement this year, we will live in Florida for two or three months of the year, spend most of the summer months at our lake home on Island Lake and keep our permanent residence in Circle Pines. The spring and fall months are the months we travel around the US and out of the country.

In addition to travel, my wife and I are active in the community, church and our crafts. I enjoy stain glass design and have completed many windows and other projects. I have found that keeping active intellectually and in excellent physical shape keeps us optimistic, young at heart and loving the voyage through life.