Doug Woodward, economist at the Moore School

Dr. Douglas P. Woodward

By John Temple Ligon

Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Dr. Douglas P. Woodward was born in Rochester, N.Y., where his Cornell-educated father was a consulting engineer. His mother, a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon, managed the house and three sons and seven daughters.

Albeit in New York State, Woodward's hometown is 350 miles from New York City. And it was a 1964 trip to the World's Fair that finally introduced Woodward to New York City. The whiff of Wall Street failed to make its mark. Through high school, Woodward's main interest was not the economists but the philosophers, particularly the existentialists.

His high school graduating class voted him "Most Individualistic."

Woodward attended State University of New York at Purchase, majoring in economics and graduating in 1978. He actually started at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, near Dayton, but Antioch was a little too Antioch, too experimental. SUNY-Purchase, however, was the practical Antioch of the New York State system.

In the summer between his junior and senior years, Woodward bicycled across the United States with two buddies - one, the curator for the Maritime Museum in San Francisco; and the other, an executive chef in NYC for B. R. Guest Restaurants, $40 million gross. Woodward experienced more wind and rain than he ever thought possible. The endurance test lasted two months with only one night in a motel. Nights in parked boxcars were as typical as in strange farmers' fields. One late afternoon, the three intrepid travelers walked into a small-town police station to ask if they could stay the night in the drunk tank, a jail cell. They were locked down for the night.

Right out of college, Woodward continued his economics education at New York University, then the academic home for Alan Greenspan, the recent chairman of the Federal Reserve. Woodward lived in Brooklyn, near Sheepshead Bay (and Lindy's restaurant), where the transit commute to class was over an hour.

At NYU he met his wife, who was enrolled in Hunter College on Park Avenue. The PhD in economics at NYU was Woodward's goal, but he heard a better deal from UT-Austin.

The two moved on to the PhD program in economics at the University of Texas at Austin, where Woodward finished in 1986.

His first job in teaching was at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. It was a great place to be as a tenured professor, but Woodward was not tenured. He put out feelers, and they were felt by the University of South Carolina.

He's now elevated in title and responsibilities, but Woodward's entry-level division of directions has been a constant while at USC: 50% in research and 50% in teaching. He is the director of the Division of Research at the Moore School, and he is also a Professor of Economics.

His wife teaches Spanish at Irmo High School. They have two sons. The younger, 19, is a part-time rocker drummer who also is a full-time student at USC. The older, 23, is a communications graduate of the College of Charleston who interned with Clear Channel. He's on the career track at Universal Music.

Dr. and Mrs. Woodward live in the center of Shandon, and they commute occasional weekends to their new condo on Hilton Head Island.

As a research economist, Woodward is known worldwide through his publications, more recently his work on immigration and economic development. But he says all economics is local, to alter the words of Tip O'Neill, the late great Boston Congressman. With a strong local identity, any community can prosper, which is exactly what Woodward sees happening here.