About the Director
Michael Nolan, Ph.D.
Director, Chair and Professor
When the University of Missouri hired Michael Nolan to teach quantitative methods after he received his Ph.D. in rural sociology from Penn State in 1971, he didn't even own a passport. By 1980, he had traveled to Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya, Indonesia, Peru, and Brazil (Liberia and Bolivia were added to the list soon thereafter) as part of the University's involvement with several USAID (United States Agency for International Development) funded projects.
As part of that effort, Nolan and his team sought to alleviate hunger and poverty through the development of specialized livestock improvement projects and improved research management capabilities in those countries. According to Nolan, an unintended but welcome consequence of their work was the fact that they generated enough interest in sociology (and economics) to recruit students who, after completing their degrees, went on to establish and populate social science research units in the host country institutions with whom MU was collaborating.
Although this was not part of the team's stated goals, Nolan recounts that aspect of his involvement with development programs as his most memorable achievement. By the time he became Division Director of Applied Social Sciences in 1994, CAFNR's international dimension was well established and he continues to share leadership for that component of CAFNR today in addition to his role as division director.