David Willis:  

The years do fly by! In high school, other than participating in team sports without too much individual success, I pretty much kept to myself. Some of you might remember I rode an ugly noisy purple motorcycle to school my last two years. If any of you remember me I would enjoy hearing from you. After high school it was Harvard on the Hill (College of San Mateo) and then a double major (Economics and English) from a small college in Montana (Rocky Mountain College) followed by a variety of sales jobs over the next ten years. In 1985, I found myself wanting a career change and returned to college to earn an MS degree in Natural Resource Economics from Washington State University. Upon graduation, I worked at the University of Idaho for two years as a research economist before deciding to return to Washington State University in 1989 where I earned a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Economics in 1993. After graduation, I continued to live in Pullman, Washington for another five years working on a variety of research projects that focused on environmental management and/or endangered species protection at either Washington State University or the University of Idaho. The two universities straddle the Washington-Idaho state line and are only seven miles apart. During my latter years in Pullman, the long winters provided me the opportunity to become a slightly above average downhill skier. In the fall of 1998, I decided it was time to leave my series of temporary positions, and accepted a faculty position in the Department of Applied Economics at Texas Tech University...Expand for more