Biography

I was born and raised on the windy wind-swept (did I say wind?) plains of western Oklahoma in the big-town-little- city environment of Weatherford, Oklahoma, which is home to Southwestern Oklahoma State University where my dad was a chemistry professor for 30 years, oil used to be king, and tornadoes drop by for an annual spring visit. Born into a family of rabid Oklahoma Sooner and St. Louis Cardinal fans, I decided as a young boy to play every sport under the sun. After proving to myself I could not play any sports in which a ball was important, in high school I posed as a cross country and track runner earning many medals and almost making the Olympics, according to my mother.  After graduating high school I attended the University of Oklahoma, first terrorizing the chemistry department as a chemistry major. In the process of attempting to complete the degree I stained and burned holes in just about every piece of clothing I had with concentrated forms of acid. After running out of clothes, I decided that chemistry wasn't my bag and through suggestion of my father majored in Psychology, earning a Bachelor's of Science degree in Psychology in 1992. As an undergraduate I worked as an undergraduate lab assistant for Dr. Lynn Devenport studying behavioral ecology and Dr. Scott Gronlund studying prospective memory utilizing an air-traffic control simulation task.
         For some strange reason, I thought it was a great idea to become an academic. I applied to several graduate schools and in the Fall of 1993 a witty, smart, hilarious and somewhat intimidating faculty member by the name of Phil Kraemer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Kentucky decided to let me work in his laboratory, and I eventually earned my PhD from UK in 1998. Oh, and by the way, I also met my wife Martha in between times in the lab and late-night jaunts down to Lynaugh's.   Much to the chagrin of my Kentucky-born-and-bred wife Martha, I decided to pursue post-doctoral study at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada in the wonderful laboratories of Bryan Kolb and Ian Whishaw, two of the greatest people on the planet. However, Lethbridge was a tough place to live for my wife, as Canadians don't like to have Americans take their jobs away. Thus, I was quickly on the job market and fortunate enough to land a job in the beautiful area of upper east Tennessee at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) in Johnson City, TN in the fall of 2000, where we now reside.

In 2006, my wife Martha decided we would 'try' to have a child, and sure enough, February 15, 2007, Alaina Isabelle Brown was born to the world. No, that's not her in the pic above (Ben Hughes found that one), but there is a nice picture of her below. Somehow, we're trying to figure out how to be parents when neither of us has gained any maturity since college.

Alaina:

My three obsessions:

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