by Chelsea Hennessy
The inside of Professor Caudill’s office is largely organized with the exception of a few advanced economics books stacked on the floor. But a smidge of disarray is expected of a Professor who has only just arrived. “I haven’t even been in all the buildings yet, but I know where the coffee is.” He laughs. While Rhodes is a new environment, the act of teaching is anything but. “If you count teaching as a grad student I’ve been teaching for 31 years.”
Although he is delighted with his career he never imagined himself as an economics professor, especially one who writes research papers. In fact, the profession was a bit of a lucky accident. “In high school, I loved math. I didn’t know where I would go to college, but I knew that I would major in math. As an undergraduate I had no interest in writing papers. On the first day of class when the teacher went over the syllabus, if there was a term paper, I would drop the class. If anyone had told me then that writing research papers would be a big part of my professional life, I would have been rolling on the ground laughing.”
Economics wasn’t introduced until years later. “One day I was talking to my adviser at Ohio Wesleyan University and he said, ‘I think you will do better later on if you double major in math and something else. Is there anything else you are interested in?’ I told him I’d always loved astronomy. He said, ’That’s good. Anything else?’” Graduate school choices came down to going to Minnesota and studying statistics or going to Florida and tackling economics. He says, “I was 20 years old and I chose Florida, partly for the weather. I love being a professor but I never set out to be one. My goal was simply to obtain the highest degree one could acquire.”
Before coming to Rhodes Professor Caudill taught at a large public university where 250-person lecture halls were just another accepted norm. Most classes at Rhodes are under 25. Although he’s been teaching for years he says, “I really think the biggest changes in my teaching style are going to occur over the next few months. It’s sad to say the big problem I’ve had to overcome most of my academic career was getting students to come to class in the first place, an unfortunate consequence of large sections. I’m very happy to be here in smaller classes. Rhodes is a completely new environment.”
He knew things were going to be different here from the first day when a student came to his office. “I had my door open and he just walked in and said ‘Hello Dr. Caudill I’m in your statistics class.’ I said ‘Oh, ok, great, what’s your problem?’ He replied, ‘I don’t have a problem I just came in to talk.” I was surprised and I realized things had changed for the better. Many students I’ve seen in the past few years just had a problem, like a test conflict. Few came in just to chat. It’s so rewarding to get to know the students and become something beyond a lecturer.”
This semester Professor Caudill is teaching statistics and econometrics, an advanced economics elective. His goal for students is to help them put meaning behind the numbers. “What I try to do as much as possible, in addition to just putting theorems on the board, is to provide some intuition and insight,” he says. “Even when students err in their calculations, they should have some sense about whether the answer they have obtained is wrong. I try to remind students, ‘You can think.’”
When the chaotic bustle derived from teaching in a new environment subsides Professor Caudill plans to devote more time to research. Broadly speaking, his research interests are in the area of applied statistics, or econometrics, which is the application of statistical methods to economic data. In economics terminology he “focuses on the development and estimation of models that are less sensitive to distributional assumptions.”
His recent articles have applied these methods to the ranking of NCAA college football teams and conferences, the identification of characteristics of micro-finance institutions that are becoming more efficient loan providers over time, and the determination of whether being a college athlete influences one’s earnings later in life. His research goals for the next five years are to publish his one hundredth refereed journal article and to write a book.
Talk about keeping the expectations low!
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