About the Author July 18, 2011

My name is Patrick Murray, though many of my friends from college know me as “Sarge”.*   This website that I maintain is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and insight, specializing in the virtues of limited government, as well as of scientific, historical, and pop cultural insights, plus the occasional sports commentary for fun.

I was born in Louisville, Ky., on March 2, 1980.  I graduated from high school in Madison, Ind., where I lettered for three seasons in football and track.  My undergraduate years were spent at Purdue University, where I majored in Mass Communications with a minor in History (honestly, I felt more like a science and history student masquerading as a comm student!).  On the side, I took some courses in German, Latin, Entomology, Oceanography and Paleontology — in other words, fun stuff!

Outside of the classroom at Purdue, I served for three seasons as a student manager on the Purdue football team.  That job allowed for me to see almost every stadium in the Big Ten (except for Iowa and Illinois), to say nothing of making some special life-long friends.  I have a number of friends who play in the NFL — including Drew Brees, with whom I celebrated my 19th, 20th, and 21st birthday — and I remain an avid football fan to this day.  As a manager, I worked directly under Coach Joe Tiller, and during the games, I helped out then-O-line Coach Danny Hope, who later became the current head coach from 2009 thought 2012.  I also worked with Coach Kevin Sumlin, who was then the receivers coach (he played at linebacker for Purdue), before going on to give the Houston Cougars program a shot in the arm and then leading the Texas A&M Aggies to become the hot program it is today.

My services with the team also allowed for me to travel to special away games, including a season opener in Los Angeles Coliseum against USC (before the Pete Carroll era, to be sure!) in 1998, and in the Citrus Bowl against Central Florida in 1999.  The three bowl games I was a small part of were the 1998 Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, the 2000 Outback Bowl in Tampa, Fla., and of course, the 2001 Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.  Those were memorable times.

After I graduated from Purdue, I went straight into business graduate school at the University of Louisville, where I earned my MBA.  The next few years found me knocking around in the customer service sector until I just happened to find a teaching opportunity as an adjunct faculty member at the Louisville campus of National College.  Finally I was able to find a job more commensurate with my education and talents.  At that school, I have taught a number of different business courses, including Intro to Business, Principles of Management, Small Business Management, Operations Management, Purchasing & Materials Management, and, my favorite, Strategic Management.  In addition to all of those, I have taught a number of general education courses, such as Public Speaking, Georgraphy, American History (both 1896-1945 and 1945-2000), Political Science, and American Government (needless to say, another one of my favorites to teach!).  Starting in the late Spring of 2013, I have also taught computer skills courses (Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.).

In more recent years, I have elected to fulfill a very latent goal of mine, and that is to become a mechanical draftsman (sometimes known as a CAD operator), if not an outright engineer.  I have a design internship under my belt at a materials handling system manufacturer in Jeffersonville, Ind., and worked as a design engineer for a conveyor systems manufacturer on the southern edge of Louisville.  In April of 2014, I accepted a position as an on-site project manager for a conveyor systems integrator, and have helped build sorter systems at FedEx Ground facilities in Fort Wayne, Ind., Indianapolis, New Castle, Del., Philadelphia, and Santa Fe Springs, Calif.  This job has allowed for me to travel extensively and to engage in extensive learning in so doing.

Assuming that I have failed to establish my renaissance man credentials yet, it is also worth noting that I have given a couple of education seminars on insects to the docents at the Louisville Zoo — an occasion that allowed for me to show my rather extensive exotic insect collection.  I also am an avid photographer (I use a Canon 7D), where I specialize in macro nature (particularly insects), aquarium fish, classic cars, and some sports.  In addition, I have been a guest on a friend’s radio show on multiple occasions, discussing the Constitution and our Founding Fathers.

* The “Sarge” cognomen started back in June of 1997 — right before my senior year of high school — and was attending football camp at Purdue.  The era of Coach Tiller was about to begin, and this camp gave me the opportunity to get to know all the coaches.  Part of the camp’s curriculum was for the campers to coalesce into passing league teams, where we had such games for three consecutive nights, four games a night.  My team’s coach was Coach Gary Emanuel, Purdue’s once and again current D-line coach.  He did not know my name, but noticed I took a rather militaristic approach towards addressing my superiors (e.g., “yessir,” “no, sir.”).  Such is the way I was raised.  Noticing this, Coach Emanuel started calling me “Sarge,” and the name stuck.  When I got on with the team as a manager, all the coaches remembered me, and soon the players too, started calling me by the same cognomen.  It was only a matter of time before the cognomen in question spilled out beyond the gridiron to the greater campus.