UWRF (University of Wisconsin -- River Falls) is a medium sized university situated 40 minutes from the downtowns of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota in the small town of River Falls, Wisconsin. I choose UWRF not only because it was only 75 miles from my hometown (Barron, WI) but its small size and small price tag made it a very attractive university for my studies. The school originally started as a Normal school for producing teachers in the late 1800's and has now grown to one of the strongest of the UW schools in undergraduate physics and chemistry. I entered UWRF in the fall of 1994 as a physics major with few long term goals in mind and graduated in May 1998 with the plan to be a undergraduate university professor. During my time at UWRF, I served as SPS president for 1 and 1/2 years, orgainized a trip to Fermi National laboratory and Chicago museums, and assisted with the bi-annual High School Science Day all 4 years.

I joined Kent State University (KSU) in the fall of 1998 to pursue a Ph. D in physics. After passing qualifying exams I joined the Center for Nuclear Research group and performed my dissertation work under the direction of Dr. Bryon Anderson. My dissertation experiment was performed at Jefferson National Laboratory (Jlab) in Newport News, Virginia. More one Jlab and my research on the research page. I completed my dissertation and thesis defense in 2003 and graduate in December of that year with my Ph. D. During my time at KSU I operated the planetarium for shows to the local schools, operated a 12'' Meade reflector telescope for public showings of planets and nebula, graded homework for several undergraduate classes, and taught the Physical Science class for two semester.