Dr. Dan Underwood
Department/Discipline: Economics, Environmental Science
Phone Number:
(360) 417-6252
Credentials
Ph.D., University of Utah;
B. A., California State University;
A.A., Fullerton College
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Daniel A. Underwood arrived at Peninsula College in the fall of 1992, and teaches economics and environmental science. His major fields of expertise include environmental economics, natural resource economics, and the economics of technological change and raw materials. Supporting fields include the history of economic thought, political economy, and urban and regional economics.
Dan’s research is primarily in the field of ecological economics. He is the author of over two dozen publications, including articles, abstracts, and reviews, and nearly two-dozen research papers presented at professional conferences. While in graduate school he won a national award for research in political economy. More recently an article he co-authored was included in a compendium of 95 seminal articles constituting the intellectual foundation of the new science ecological economics. When not conducting his own research, Dan serves as a referee for the Journal of Economic Issues (he also served a term on its editorial board) and the journal Ecological Economics.
In the world of teaching, Dan has established a long-term record for effective and innovative teaching. At Denison University he was a finalist as Teacher of the Year for two consecutive years. More recently he has been inducted into Who’s Who Among America’s College Teachers in 1998, and again in 2000. In June 2001 he was the recipient of a Peninsula College Outstanding Faculty Award. At present he is leading a team of economic educators to redefine what constitutes Principles of Economics.
Dan was awarded Peninsula College’s annual sabbatical for the 1999-2000 academic year. He used that time to study forest ecology and forest management, working with such noted professors as Dr. Chad Oliver, Yale University, and Dr. Jerry Franklin, University of Washington. Since his return he has developed innovative field courses in Forest Ecology and Old Growth Forest Ecosystems.
Prior to coming to PC, Dan was an assistant professor of natural resource economics with the International Center for Water Resources Management at Central State University in Wilberforce, OH. There he authored several studies involving economic development in Africa, including fieldwork in Senegal. He also helped develop innovative education methods in multi-disciplinary science, an effort that garnered over a quarter of a million dollars in grant monies. While at Central State University Dan received an Outstanding Service award. As an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Denison University in Granville, OH, he was nominated twice as Teacher of the Year, partly as a result of his efforts towards developing innovative methods in education.
Interests
When not causing trouble at Peninsula College, Dan works a 30-acre homestead with his wife Joyce and their companion, Attila the Kat!
There he puts into practice the science of sustainability, designing and building energy and water supply systems. Orchards, expansive gardens, green houses, and an occasional long legged short tailed antlered rat (deer) provide a substantial portion of their food needs. He also plants and tends about 25 acres of forest, including commercial forest and ecological reserves.
In his spare time Dan hikes and climbs in the Olympics, and in the remote desert canyons of Southern Utah. He has been known for an occasional extended canoe trip. One trip took him about 1900 miles, having canoed from the central Yukon Territory across Alaska to the Bering Sea. Another 2,500 mile trip began in central British Columbia, then traced the length of Alberta and the Northwest Territory, nearly to the Artic Ocean. Ask him sometime about his “3 bears” experience.
Other
Courses Taught
- Principles of Macroeconomics
- Principles of Microeconomics
- The Economic System
- Introduction to Environmental Science
- Forest Ecology
- Natural Resource Management
Forum Profile
Most unusual on-job experience:
Microeconomics, the end of winter quarter, 1995. I was sitting in LE-1 grading “Fun Exercises” while my students worked their way through “Nice Opportunity #3,” about 40 multiple choice questions which would reveal how well they had mastered the unit. Students turn in their nice opportunity when finished, then depart. I looked up as Joan Countryman walked up to turn hers in. Stacking her nice opportunity on top of the others she said “I’ve got something for you,” and then proceeded to take off her T-shirt! As bare skin began to show I tried to say something like “Stop, your undershirt is coming off too!” but I was unable to get out a word, partly because she got the shirt off too fast, partly because of shock. Fortunately she was wearing a bikini top! I just sat there, speechless, probably red faced, watched her toss the shirt on the desk, then walk out the door. When I turned back around there stood another student – Jeff Davis – who said “I’ve got something for you.” He took off his T-shirt – he too was wearing a bikini top – tossed it on the desk, then walked out. The whole time this went on I was unable to say a word. I looked at the students remaining in the room who burst into laughter. Still befuddled for words I went back to grading. The T-shirts hang on my office wall. They say “This is a test. THIS IS ONLY A TEST.”
Best Thing About Job:
Academic freedom empowers me to create a learning environment that facilitates free and unencumbered pursuit of ideas; it makes possible teaching economics as a tool for critical thinking; it allows me to revel as my students apply those tools to better understand the world in which they live.
Worst Thing About Job:
At first I thought it would be impossible to pick just one. Then, after further consideration, I realized there was the worst thing I’ve ever encountered in education: Course Curriculum Guides, General Educational Competencies, and an effort to replace “higher learning” with a “knowledge independent” competencies set incapable of operational definition, measurement and comparison which makes assessment impossible, and this undertaken in the name of assessment! Yeah, I can’t figure it out either.
Place of Birth:
I was born in Whittier California. Now look: I didn’t pick my place of birth and it is only coincidence that Richard Millhouse Nixon was born there too. Just keep in mind he was raised and buried in Yorba Linda!
Why I moved to the Peninsula:
William Blake wrote, “There are two great voices here: the mountains and the sea.” Those voices summoned me. Well, actually, Peninsula College offered me a job...
Current Residence:
The Underwood Homestead. It’s an independent territory on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Family:
Joyce, my wonderful wife.
Hobbies:
Extended wilderness backpacking, canoe expeditions, photography, and homesteading. Of course, given the arduous nature of most of these activities “pleasure” often seems far removed. But there is pleasure in pain...which reminds me of another hobby: writing poems – that rhyme!
Color:
When I moved here it was Cobalt Blue. Now that I’ve been on the Peninsula awhile my favorite color is the many shades of forest.
Favorite Book:
In the winter of 1981 the rigors of graduate school had reached a new low: the use of differential equations to explain urban location patterns – BORING! One evening while in a particularly rebellious mood I picked up Tolstoy’s War and Peace. A true epic, Tolstoy took me to Russia, before, during and after the Napoleonic invasion. I became a part of that time and shared in the great drama that revealed the human condition in all its dimensions; of love and loss, of passion and betrayal, of hope and fear, of struggle and cowardice, of honor and perseverance, of courage and lust, of... I became a part of that world, the characters people I knew, that which effected them affected me. That book, that story, was so masterfully told that it will always be a part of me. I can still close my eyes, go back, feel the bitter cold, and remember the events that changed my life.
Favorite Movie:
It’s probably Brazil, perhaps the most haunting, surrealistic tale of the future as present ever put into film. Don’t watch it because you’ll never get it out of your mind!
Favorite Restaurant:
Well, my favorite meal was served at Gwennie’s in Alaska. I’d just completed a rigorous 45 day canoe trip that began in the Yukon Territory, crossed Alaska, and brought us to within about 100 miles of the Bering Sea. We returned to Anchorage by “bush plane” and had breakfast at Gwennie’s. Mine was a giant Belgian waffle heaped high with fresh strawberries and blueberries. I don’t know if anything before or since has tasted that good. My favorite place to eat is the San Juan Inn, Mexican Hat, Utah. I like to sit at the counter seat where Hayduke sat. There, confronted by Sheriff Bishop Love about “monkey wrenching,” Hayduke tossed a cup of hot coffee in the sheriff’s face, then made his famous getaway: ran up the road past the trading post, raced away in his jeep and, bivouacked at a cliff overhang, made his escape by rappelling his jeep over the side. If you ever get to the San Juan Inn try the Fry Bread. It is awesome, especially with hot coffee.
Favorite Way to Relax:
Backpack a few hundred miles, paddle a canoe a thousand miles or so, work the homestead... Life is too short to “relax.”
Favorite Vacation Spot:
Southern Utah, wandering the labyrinths of red rock, seeking solitude, finding solace, and experiencing spiritual recharge from a great energy source emanating from that spectacular geologic uplift.
Most Unusual Vacation Spot:
Visiting the “in-laws” on the farm in Lake Woebegone country, southeastern Minnesota.
A highlight in my life:
Our wedding day.
A big surprise in my life:
On the Peace River -- canoe expedition from Hope, British Columbia, to the Arctic – we heard the desperate cry of an animal. It was a bear trying to cross the swollen river with three cubs! Unable to stay above water the bear drove her cubs away, abandoning them mid-river to save herself, then swam to shore. We managed to pull all three cubs from the river. Soaked and scared they curled up between us on the canoe. Now what? Like, they don’t cover bear rescue in CANOE 101! Mother, safely ashore, was frantically racing up and down the beach looking for her cubs. We paddled canoe and cubs round a bend, keeping a sharp eye out for mamma, and tossed them ashore. As they scrambled up the river bank into the brush the last one stopped, turned back towards us, waved its paw, then joined the others. OK, I lied about waving the paw, but the rest is true and I’ve pictures to prove it!
An embarrassing moment:
Joyce likes to tell the story of the first time she watched me “race” a triathlon. The swim was a long “out and back” in a lake. At the time I wasn’t much of a swimmer – actually, my aquatic ability could more accurately be described as “movement so as to avoid drowning,” during which success was never a sure thing. As usual I was one of the last out of the water. Coughing and gasping as I ran up the beach I passed Joyce standing alongside other spectators. As I did she said, “Gee whiz Dan, when the old fat women finished the swim with no sign of you, I thought you had drowned.” Joyce is my biggest race fan.
I’m a sucker for:
To the best of my knowledge, I’m not.
My pets include:
No pets. There is, however, a self-sufficient kat on the homestead. We call her Attila the Kat! That is one mousing kat!
Most cherished personal item:
The dilapidated leather set of The Great Books of Western Civilization my father, now deceased, gave me.
Something I’ve always wanted to do:
Design and build a self-sufficient (close as possible) homestead; house, water supply, energy system, food production, etc.
What I want to do:
Finish building our dream homestead and make it work; complete and publish my text; hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada; take a year on the road and travel the country with Joyce; climb mount McKinley; complete the Great Books; then find something else to do, which will not be difficult, though more than likely whatever I find to do will be. Hey, if it’s simple why bother?
My Curriculam Vitae (pdf file)
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