Mike Hodge:  

Life I am at mhodge dot ufl dot edu. I am originally from Richmond, VA, but graduated from high school in Naperville, IL. For college, I first completed my AA while serving in the US Army, and then went to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC) and completed my BS in industrial technology (May 1995), only to get involved in real estate, in which I worked as a Realtor as well as invested in rental homes and duplexes. This was something that worked out well financially, but was not very intellectually satisfying. I had been tutoring math to a few friends, and thought it would be nice if I could teach math at the college level. So I returned to SIUC (June 1997) and pursued an MS in math while teaching as a TA and eventually sold my rental properties. I took a year off during the program to pursue other business opportunities, but finally graduated with my MS in June 2000. I was on a roll so much with school at this point that I decided to keep going and realized I had a particular interest in applications of math and statistics in business. I moved to Gainesville, Florida in July 2000 to pursue a PhD in operations management (a branch of Decision and Information Sciences) in the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida (UF). At the same time, I started teaching math and statistics at Santa Fe Community College (SFCC). I also worked as a TA for the College of Business at UF (8/00 to 8/01), and later as an instructor for the math department at UF. I plan to teach statistics at UF in the near future -- probably next summer (2006) when I am off f...Expand for more