James P. Houck has been a faculty member at the University of Minnesota since 1965 in what is now the Department of Applied Economics. He has served as its department head since 1990. Before that, Houck taught and conducted research in price analysis, agricultural policy, trade and trade policy, and related subjects. This research led to the publication of numerous journal articles, book chapters, bulletins, and a couple of books. In research, Houck's central objectives are to perform solid and useful work and then write about it in a clear, well-organized, and concise way. He has also tried to deliver graduate and undergraduate courses that are interesting, valuable, yet challenging for students.

Since 1990, Houck has devoted virtually all his time to administration and leadership of his large, complex, and highly regarded academic department at the University of Minnesota. This talented department is viewed nationally and internationally as a leader in defining and redefining the role of traditional agricultural economics and related disciplines for the 21st century. In 1994, this department simplified its name from "Agricultural and Applied Economics" to "Applied Economics," a unique maneuver that is being debated, analyzed, and watched all around the profession.

Houck grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a gritty industrial city far from the Midwest where he has spent virtually all of his professional career. For reasons that remain obscure, he enrolled in agricultural economics at Penn State in 1953 and stayed with it for his BS and MS degrees in 1957 and 1959, respectively. He continued with a PhD in agricultural economics at the University of Minnesota in 1963. Brief sojourns on the faculty at Penn State and in a visiting appointment at the Harvard Business School preceded his return to Minnesota in 1965 where he has remained ever since. He is a "lifer" at the University of Minnesota and is proud of its role and history in the evolution of agricultural economics as a professional discipline.

Over the years, Houck has been very active in AAEA. He served as editor of the AJAE in the 1981-83 period. In those forgotten days, the Journal editor also wrote, produced, and distributed the bi-monthly AAEA Newsletter. He worked hard in that editorial assignment to produce a Journal that was compelling to a broad spectrum of the profession and as clearly written as possible. He was elected to the AAEA Executive Board in 1986 for a three-year term and later served as president of the association in 1992-93. He was instrumental, along with others, in setting up the Frederick V. Waugh Appreciation Club.

While on the University of Minnesota's faculty, he spent a year's leave in Bangkok, Thailand, with the Rockefeller Foundation at Kasetsart University, a year's sabbatical at the University of Sydney in Australia, and shorter periods teaching and conducting research elsewhere in Asia, Africa, South America, Europe, as well as in North Carolina and Oregon. He has served on various boards, national committees, and study teams.

In 1986, Houck published a slender textbook entitled, Elements of Agricultural Trade Policies. It grew out of his long-standing course at Minnesota for seniors and beginning graduate students. While this book has achieved modest success here in the United States, a real source of satisfaction to its author is that it has been translated and published in Spanish, Russian, and Chinese, with a Polish version also in the works. A revised edition is overdue, but it will likely have to wait until Houck steps aside as department head.

Finally, Houck has adopted the following credo in his work which he recommends to others: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."