Bob Clemen

My Professional Side

I arrived at Duke University in the fall of 1995 from the University of Oregon, where I had taught since 1984. Before that I was at Indiana University getting my PhD, and before that I spent about 5 years selling skis, backpacks, and so on for a retail chain. But you can see that most of my adult life has been as an academic. No surprise. I was good at going to school, so I thought I should keep doing that.

My research and teaching interests lie generally in the areas of decision making and decision analysis, and I have taught courses in these and related areas since 1984. My textbook Making Hard Decisions, now in its second edition, has become the leading text for decision analysis courses, and it is used not only in business schools but also in engineering, public policy, economics, environmental science, medical schools, and even law schools!

If you want to know more about my "professional" side, please feel free to visit my professional home page. There you can find out such trivia as:

My research has mostly focused on probability judgments by experts, forecasting, and various aspects of modeling in decision analysis. I've been very fortunate to have much of my research work funded by the National Science Foundation over the years.
My undergraduate degree was in Anthropology from Stanford, MBA from University of Colorado, and PhD in Quantitative Business Analysis from Indiana University.
I've been involved in developing decision-making curricula for high schools.
I have lots of professional publications.
I've served in a variety of editorial roles. Most recently, I am the founding editor of a new journal, Decision Analysis. Our first issue appeared in March, 2004.

The Important Stuff

The professional part of my life is important, no question about it. My work as an academic has been very fulfilling. But as you know, there is more to life. Here is a glimpse at my personal life and some people who really matter to me:

I was married in 1977 to Sheri Rand. We were married for over 20 years, but the marriage broke up after we moved from Oregon to North Carolina. Sheri and I are still friends, and our best collaboration has been our four wonderful children. Here's the current rundown:

My oldest daughter Taylor, now 28. Here she is with her husband, Sam Rutledge. They were married in summer of 2004, and my first grandchild arrived on September 11, 2006. Arthur Joseph Rutledge. Yes, I am a proud grandfather. Yes, you have to look at all of the pictures!

Click on the arrow in the center to activate this video that
Sam made, and then click the "play" button in the lower left.

Bethany is 26, 2004 graduate from Mills College in Oakland, now a dancer and Pilates trainer. She's an incredible dancer! She has a great time working and hanging out in the San Francisco Bay area. She goes to Eugene frequently to visit her sister and brothers.

My son Layne (23) is a senior in mechanical engineering at Oregon State University and plans to go into alternative energy as a career. He plays drums in a small band with his friend Brett, and they are starting to get some real gigs.

Layne has been studying Tae Kwon Do for about nine years. Here he is at his dojo. Yes, he really did kick the bag that his friend is holding about seven feet off of the floor!

My youngest son, Robin (19), is taking courses at the local community college in Euegene, and plans to be a biologist. He's developed a particular interest in sakes and works part time for "Sanke World" in Corvallis, Oregon, taking care of their snakes. Eventually he will help with demonstrations at local public schools.

He's also a bass guitar player -- and a pretty good one! In the picture to the right he has just broken one of the low strings on his bass. (Wow, how do you break one of those?)

My kids seem to like each other. They have a good time when they get together. Here they are in one of their milder moments. I suspect that there are some things that a father just doesn't want to know about.

Enough about the kids. Closer to home, I remarried in 2000 to Margaret Mason. Margaret grew up in Chapel Hill and has lived in the area almost all of her life.

Here is a favorite picture of Margaret that I took when we went to Hawaii in 2001.

A little more about our interests:

Margaret and I dance. She's been dancing all her life -- folk dancing, contra, swing, ballroom. At the moment she is teaching a belly dance class for retired women. We have recently gotten into square dancing. Our group dances on Friday nights in Chapel Hill.

I'm into birding, have been for years. Yes, I keep a life list of birds I've seen. It's somewhere above 300. Most recent addition: the "bananaquit," a small tropical bird. We saw a family of these in Puerto Rico in summer of 2007. I don't think it looks at all like a banana.

I'm an amateur astronomer. I've recently rebuilt my telescope so that it packs into a small and easily transportable package. It has a 10" diameter mirror -- like having an eye with a pupil 10" across. There are few things I like better than getting out on a clear night and tracking down nebulae, galaxies, star clusters, and other wonders.

I've always been interested in the environment and sustainability, and I've recently gotten into biodiesel. I've learned how to make it, and I work with a couple of small groups in the area here in NC. It started because I wanted to be able to run my motorhome on biodiesel. Then Margaret and I decided to trade her Camry for a diesel Jetta. I keep it filled with (mostly) biodiesel that I've helped to make. Here is a nice article and picture from Working @ Duke.

Also on the sustainability side, I recently added an electric assist motor to my bicycle. Now I can ride my bike easily to and from work. It works really well -- a BionX system made in Quebec.

And finally there is the motorhome. Yes, it really does run on biodiesel. In fact, on our most recent trip to Big Bend in Texas, we went almost the whole way on biodiesel. Here are some photos from our journeys around the US. Yes, we took all of these pictures!