In spite of my best judgment and due to some serendipitous events I ended up in graduate school at The Ohio State University working with Rich Jagacinski in 1978. I distinctly remember sitting in front of an analog computer and pretending to understand as Rich explained to me that linking two integrators in a closed circuit would produce a sinusoidal signal. Six years and two kids later, with support and encouragement from my wife, I finally completed the Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology and took a “real” job at the University of Illinois where I had joint appointments in three departments [Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (50%), Psychology (25%); and the Institute of Aviation (25%)]. Although the joint appointments seemed like a good idea (especially for someone who still wasn’t sure what he wanted to be when he grew up), I soon learned that I wasn’t up to the task of serving three masters. In 1990, I failed to get tenure and had to leave Illinois. In essence, I was banished to the “Pointless Forest.” However, like Oblio, I was surprised to learn that everything in the Pointless Forest had a point.
Fortunately, I found a home in the Psychology Department at Wright State University where supportive students and colleagues helped me over the tenure hurdle and up the academic ladder to the rank of Professor. I was very lucky to find a psychology department and a university where the goals of application and theory are seen as complementary, rather than opposing forces. This atmosphere encourages interdisciplinary collaborations in problem-centered research endeavors, consistent with the spirit of Pasteur’s Quadrant (Stokes, 1997). These collaborations led to an NSF:IGERT award in 2005 in the area of Technology-based Learning with Disabilities. It is ironic that I have more encouragement to pursue problems that span the disciplines of Psychology, Engineering, Aviation, and other domains from within the Psych department at WSU, than I had with the joint appointments at U of I.
Another serendipitous twist of fate led to my becoming chair of the Psych department in 2004. To everyone’s surprise, including my own, it hasn’t been a complete catastrophe. This is largely due to an excellent faculty and the leadership and generous support from our college (College of Science and Mathematics) and university. In addition to chair responsibilities, I teach graduate and undergraduate courses in the areas of cognitive psychology and cognitive systems engineering. And thanks to some extraordinary graduate students, I am still able to keep a hand in research as I kibitz on their projects.
One of my greatest pleasures is collaborating with students to explore questions and domains of mutual interest. The opportunity to learn along side the students is what makes life in the university most attractive for me. I find that the enthusiasm and skepticism of students is the best guide for discovering interesting things. I do my best to follow these guides to where ever they lead. My biggest challenge is getting students in psychology to appreciate the elegance and significance of closed loop circuits, such as the one that produces sinusoidal signals. To that end, Rich Jagacinski and I recently wrote a book “Control Theory for Humans,” with the goal of introducing the logic and analytical language of control systems to social scientists. It is not clear that any psychologists have read it, but we have gotten some very enthusiastic feedback from several control engineers.
In spite of my best judgment and due to some serendipitous events I ended up in graduate school at The Ohio State University working with Rich Jagacinski in 1978. I distinctly remember sitting in front of an analog computer and pretending to understand as Rich explained to me that linking two integrators in a closed circuit would produce a sinusoidal signal. Six years and two kids later, with support and encouragement from my wife, I finally completed the Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology and took a “real” job at the University of Illinois where I had joint appointments in three departments [Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (50%), Psychology (25%); 
and the Institute of Aviation (25%)]. Although the joint appointments seemed like a good idea (especially for someone who still wasn’t sure what he wanted to be when he grew up), I soon learned that I wasn’t up to the task of serving three masters. In 1990, I failed to get tenure and had to leave Illinois. In essence, I was banished to the “Pointless Forest.” However, like Oblio, I was surprised to learn that everything in the Pointless Forest had a point. 
One of my greatest pleasures is collaborating with students to explore questions and domains of mutual interest. The opportunity to learn along side the students is what makes life in the university most attractive for me. I find that the enthusiasm and skepticism of students is the best guide for discovering interesting things. I do my best to follow these guides to where ever they lead. My biggest challenge is getting students in psychology to appreciate the elegance and significance of closed loop circuits, such as the one that produces sinusoidal signals. To that end, Rich Jagacinski and I recently wrote a book “Control Theory for Humans,” with the goal of introducing the logic and analytical language of control systems to social scientists. It is not clear that any psychologists have read it, but we have gotten some very enthusiastic feedback from several control engineers.