I am a left-handed and right-footed only child who grew up in a quiet suburban neighborhood near Montreal. I lived in a three-bedroom split-level house with my mom, dad, and maternal grandmother. For most of my childhood, my parents ran a neighborhood children's shoe store, the kind of mom-and-pop local enterprise so rare these days.
I received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University in 1984, majoring in Accounting. Oops. I worked briefly in an accounting firm before returning to school to earn a second bachelor's degree, a B.A. in Psychology, in 1987. I then moved to Indiana for grad school, where I earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology. After a brief stint in Milwaukee, I moved to Huntsville in 1996 to take a job at UAH. Here I have held a variety of positions -- Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor, Chair of the Department of Sociology, UAH Faculty Senate President, and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences. In 2017, after three years in the Dean's role, I resigned to return to the far less stressful and potentially satisfying position of Professor of Sociology for the remaining few years of my career.
Family is extremely important to me. I am luckily and happily married to Melanie Berbrier. We are a busy blended family that includes four teenagers -- Samantha and Jack (my two children), as well as Brooke and Jesse (Melanie's two); George and Octavian, our sweet and loopy dogs; and Casper and Sunny (two loud and jittery parakeets).
