Dr. Brent Evans, assistant professor of economics, came to Georgia College in 2004 as a first-year student. He “fell in love with the campus” as he worked through his undergraduate degree.

Not sure exactly where his career path would lead, he decided jump right into a Ph.D. program.

“I went to Mississippi State straight out of Georgia College for my Ph. D.,” said Evans. “I majored in economics at Georgia College, and just based on how much I loved it, I really wanted to be a professor, but frankly I wasn’t sure if I had the math ability.”

Hard work and determination pushed him through the program and helped him land his first teaching job at Dalton State.

Then a position opened up at his alma mater. He considered it his “dream job” so he and his wife Kendra— also a Georgia College graduate—took the leap of faith and moved back to Milledgeville. 

“I knew I would love the job, but the question was ‘do we want to live in a small town or not,’” said Evans. “After being here just a few months, it was very clearly the right decision.”

“I’m absolutely so happy that I made the decision to come back. I love the job, and we really like the community.” 

Most days you can find Evans in Atkinson Hall where he is highly-engaged with his economics students. 

“My research is often on doing things either I find interesting or that I think students will find interesting,” said Evans. “Ultimately, I’d like to do something that helps craft my skills and gives students a reason to connect with me. That’s why I started doing sports economics research.”

His past research focuses on topics like the relationship to Wonderlic Test scores, draft position and NFL productivity or the evidence of skill and strategy in daily fantasy basketball.

“What I find is students are often interested in those things, so it’s a really nice avenue to teach students how to do research and how to manage data.”

Although his research interests have slightly shifted, he’s still a resource for students looking to do their senior capstone research project on sport economics, and many do. Evans says courses like econometrics (the math of economics) and the capstone research project help give Georgia College students a top-notch experience.

“From the economics students I see over and over again, they’re really exceptional,” he said. “We send usually two or three students to Ph.D. programs every year.” 

“We also go to a research conference with them in February, and about six or seven of our students go,” he said. “It’s so obvious that our students are more qualified to give research talks, and they have well developed economics skills.”

It’s those extraordinary students he works with each day and his fellow faculty members in the department that solidified he’s right where he needs to be, guiding students in the program he also is a product of.

“It makes it really fun to go to class when the students want to know how the world works and are willing to be flexible with their mindset when they’re analyzing things in economics,” he said.  

“I think our economics faculty is really strong, and I’m really thankful to be in the economics and finance department.”