I am originally from Park Rapids, Minnesota, a small resort town in the lake country of central Minnesota. I did my undergraduate work in Mathematics at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. I did my graduate work in Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, under the direction of Paul Terwilliger. I earned my Ph. D. in Mathematics in May of 2000 and then spent five years as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Gettysburg College. I returned to Carleton in the fall of 2005, as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics, I was promoted to Associate Professor of Mathematics in the fall of 2009, and I was promoted to Professor of Mathematics in the fall of 2015. I was Department Chair from July of 2017 until June of 2020 and I became an Associate Dean of the College and Director of Undergraduate Research in July of 2021. My title was changed to Associate Provost and Director of Undergraduate Research in July of 2022.

My mathematical interests are in algebra and combinatorics, especially enumerative and algebraic combinatorics. My research includes work on pattern-avoiding permutations, a generalization of the Terwilliger algebra of a distance-regular graph or association scheme, the combinatorics of symmetric functions, and the combinatorics of the Legendre-Stirling and Jacobi-Stirling numbers. I am also interested in undergraduate problem-solving, undergraduate research, and games and puzzles with mathematical connections. In my spare time I enjoy running, baking bread, pizza, lasagna, cheesecake, cookies, and brownies, reading, writing, and playing games like Dominion, Seven Wonders, and Azul (Stained Glass of Sintra) with my family.