Remembering Old UF Economics Profs Denslow & Rush

I was browsing through my Sunday morning Gainesville Sun newspaper, looking for any interesting articles, when I came upon David Denslow's column.  Denslow is a retired University of Florida economics professor who has recently taken up speaking out on the issues of the day.  Today's article was about Brexit, a.k.a. Britain's vote to exit the European Community...which Denslow says is going to be bad for them.  Well, I don't have to be an economics professor to discern that, but it also helps to have some strong statistics to back up your argument.  And the good professor has always been on top of his facts...although his presentation of them can seem a bit dry and hurried...

Back in the year 2000, when I was in the middle of finishing up my Bachelor's program at the University of Florida after a hiatus of about twenty years, I was taking two summer introductory economics courses to fulfill my basic course distribution requirements for the degree.  They were Macroeconomics and Microeconomics and were "TV" courses that were broadcast over a local public service channel.  The lectures were also available over the Internet, about which I was then rather challenged (and still am to a degree), so I kept to the televised lessons.  Our aforementioned Dr. David Denslow taught the macroeconomics class and Dr. Mark Rush taught microeconomics.  Both topics were interesting to me, but in the end it seemed that I got lost and confused on the "macro" level while attaining a reasonable degree of understanding on the "micro".  That might have been due to the nature of the material itself...or it might have been the result of the professors and how they taught their courses...

For the most part, I liked both professors' classes...hey, I got "A" in both of them!  But whereas Denslow went a mile a minute with his teaching, Rush paced his lectures with humorous breaks that helped us poor unenlightened students to catch up with him.  One of his devices was to use the show's "Director" as a fall guy, and they were forever trading barbs with one another.  Another was Rush's use of his frequent trips to Leonardo's Pizza on University Avenue to illustrate microeconomic principles.  Maybe poor Denslow just couldn't compete with that approach and unfairly suffered by comparison.  Besides, had I been teaching introductory college economics classes, I probably would have resembled Dave more than Mark...although certainly I would have fared badly in comparison to either of them...they both were very competent, good teachers who sparked interest in their respective subjects...

One sidelight to all this: I used to go out to a coffee shop and study there before my tests in these classes, which basically consisted of mid-terms and finals.  And just which coffee shop was this? Why, the old Magnolia Parke Starbucks, where I am sitting right now writing this article.  Except that, back then in mid-2000, it had just opened its doors for the first time.  Since then, over the years, I've seen Dr. Rush as a customer here.  Were I to make a list of my favorite school teachers, from elementary school all the way to the end of college, he would be right up there on it. As far as I know, he is still teaching microeconomics at UF.  And, of course, we now know where to find Dr. Denslow on a Sunday morning...