Dr. Robert C. Guell (pronounced “Gill”) is an associate professor of economics at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana. He earned a B.A. in statistics and economics in 1986 and an M.S. in economics one year later from the University of Missouri–Columbia. In 1991, he earned a Ph.D. from Syracuse University, where he discovered the thrill of teaching. He has taught courses for freshmen, upper-division undergraduates, and graduate students from the principles level, through public finance, all the way to mathematical economics and econometrics.

Dr. Guell has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals. He has worked extensively in the area of pharmaceutical economics, suggesting that the private market’s patent system, while necessary for drug innovation, is unnecessary and inefficient for production.

In 1998, Dr. Guell was the youngest faculty member ever to have been given Indiana State University’s Caleb Mills Distinguished Teaching Award. His talent as a champion of quality teaching was recognized again in 2000 when he was named project manager for the Lilly Project to Transform the First-Year Experience, a Lilly Endowment–funded project to raise first-year persistence rates at Indiana State University. He has since become Coordinator of First-Year Programs.

Dr. Guell’s passion for teaching economics led him to request an assignment with the largest impact. The one-semester general education basic economics course became the vehicle to express that passion. Unsatisfied with the books available for the course, he made it his calling to produce what you have before you today—an all-in-one readable issues-based text.