Professor of Practice

Email: gschatz@lamar.edu

Growing up in Fargo, North Dakota, I developed an interest in boating, sailing, and canoeing from attending Boy Scouts of America summer camps and visits to lakes near Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Reading novels about the sea by Howard Pease and earning the BSA merit badge in seamanship sealed my desire to pursue a career in the merchant marine.

Education and Experience

After graduating with a BA in economics from Moorhead State College (now Minnesota State University Moorhead), I began working as an ordinary seaman and able-bodied seaman on Great Lakes bulk carriers. During the winter months I attended the University of Chicago and earned an MA in economics. After about four years working on the Great Lakes, I began working on ocean-going tankers and freighters and obtained my USCG issued deck officer’s license, third mate of steam and motor vessels of any gross tons, upon oceans.

Teaching Career

In 1988 I began my teaching career as an assistant professor of economics at Moorhead State College. In 1989 I began teaching at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine, retiring in 2021. During the almost thirty years at MMA, I had taught courses in seamanship labs, rules of the road preparation, microeconomics and macroeconomics, finance, managerial and finance accounting, marketing, human resources, quantitative methods, and managerial economics. In 2020 I began teaching ECON5333 at Lamar University.