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Northwest Missouri State University

  • myNorthwest

Meet the Faculty

Dr. Richard Fulton

Dr. Richard Fulton

Phone: 562-1291
E-mail: fulton@nwmissouri.edu

Listen! Dr. Fulton on Political Science (MP3, 1.11MB)

Coming from the plains of central Illinois, I am a solid Midwesterner. After graduating from Manual Training High School (though with absolutely no manual skills at all) I attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Being a liberal arts school, Knox left a lifetime commitment to the concept that an educated individual is someone who could recognize, at the very least, and converse at some level about the broad spectrum of subjects that enrich our lives. These include everything from economics to science to the arts and humanities--and, of course, the social sciences. At one point I had to choose between a Theatre major and Political Science. I chose something that would provide an income. None of this prepared me for graduate work at the University of Connecticut. The people out there think the world ends at the Appalachian Mountains.

After coursework at Uconn, I taught a year at Knox and then went to Liberia, West Africa to teach and do dissertation research. Upon returning to the U.S. I was at Case Western Reserve for three years, King’s College in Wilkes Barre, Pa for three years and then on to Northwest for an anticipated three or four years. Thirty years later I’m still here. My basic area of interest is Comparative Government, but I have taught, and continue to teach, in a variety of the corners of the political science discipline. In addition to the classroom work, I began Northwest’s participation in the Washington D.C. internship program and then the Missouri London semester study-abroad program, both of which I still oversee. I helped inaugurate the Maastrich study-abroad program as well. My research interests range from my early work with political anthropology to a book on the American Revolution to my present project, a text on the World Trade Organization (with Kevin Buterbaugh). I have for the last twenty five years written a weekly column of opinion (called public scholarship in the trade) for the local newspaper.

Lastly, I am married to a professor at Missouri Western State College and have a daughter who graduated from NYU law school and now practices (and lives, she says) poverty law in New York City. Her parents are quite proud of her.

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