Now in his second year at Shippensburg University, Corey Williams is an assistant professor in the economics department. 

As the sole macroeconomist in his department, he usually teaches several sections of Macroeconomics (ECON 101) each semester.

Students stepping into William’s classroom will quickly find that the general vibe is, “Oh, this guy is a nerd.” 

Not in a bad way of course, rather completely endearing. In his class, he makes it clear that he does not care for formalities — they make him feel old and awkward. He asks students to call him Corey, rather than professor or Dr. Williams. 

Corey conducts independent research and publishes under the university’s affiliation. That research mostly deals with producer price inflation dynamics and moral hazards in the financial sector. 

Outside of research he advises the SU Economics Club, SU’s Magic the Gathering club and the men’s club baseball team. 

He attended Clarkson University, a small private school in upstate New York near the Canadian border, where he majored in supply chain management. Clarkson is primarily an engineering school, but Corey was part of the 30% or so that were “goofy” business majors.

During college, Corey interned at GE Aviation. As a supply chain account specialist, he managed orders from suppliers and tracked them in the fulfillment process. “I felt like I was a glorified USPS tracker,” Corey said. He began to realize that supply chain management was not the correct career for him.

After completing his studies at Clarkson, Corey spent a year in a corporate leadership program with United Technologies, in its subsidiaries Pratt & Whitney and Otis Elevator. 

That year was important for him, because it allowed him to study for and take his graduate record examination (GRE) and allowed him to continue research that he had started during college.

After that year, Corey attended graduate school at West Virginia University. At WVU he studied economics, earning his masters in two years and finishing his doctorate in another two.

Compared to supply chain management, academia turned out to be much more rewarding. “I really feel and observe the impact that I have on a daily basis,” Corey said. In this field, he has a lot more autonomy and control over his research and his course curricula.

Corey knows the impact faculty can have on their students. As part of his undergraduate degree, he was required to take a course in econometrics. “You had to pass the sniff test of “can you do math?,” Corey said. 

That experience introduced him to a young and down-to-earth professor who had a passion for the subject. The class was a rewarding challenge for him, and the faculty members encouraged him to pursue academia.

Corey tries to emulate that in his own teaching. He said he can derive a lot more meaning from teaching than anything he was doing at United Technologies.

As for why he chose Shippensburg, Corey explained that location played a big role. “I grew up in Vermont, as my students all know,” Corey said. “It is a hobby of Vermonters to tell people they grew up in Vermont.”

Having grown up in a more rural area, he is comfortable in areas where things move more slowly. As Corey sees it, Shippensburg is not only between his home in Vermont and alma mater in West Virginia, but was similar in character to both. Corey’s father was also familiar with the area, especially Letterkenny Army Depot and the Army War College in Carlisle.

“It’s a beautiful area,” he said. 

West Virginia University has a reputation for being more pedagogically focused, which Corey sees as having made him more compatible with a more teaching-focused school like Shippensburg University.

Any student who is taking a course with Corey would know of his interest in Magic the Gathering. He started playing the card game back in 2005, when he was taught by his best friend’s babysitters. “My best friend and I still play Magic to this day,” Corey said. “We just spend way more money than we should on it.” 

Corey can go into explicit detail on his choice of decks and cards, and a selection of his work can be found on his website alongside his curriculum vitae and publications.

A 29-year-old bachelor living in Chambersburg who only teaches two days of the week, Corey has a lot of time on his hands. That allows him to set aside plenty of time to sit back and focus on his interests. “I’m fortunate that I’m in that circumstance,” Corey said.

Aside from his interest in Magic the Gathering, Corey maintains several other hobbies. One of those is running. “I love running — it clears my head,” Corey said. It is how he’s able to balance work, life, and his teaching and research obligations.

To stay organized, Corey makes lists of what he needs to do each day or each week. “I get the fulfillment of physically crossing them off whatever sticky pad or legal pad that I’m writing them on.

Corey argues that there “is a clear overlap between me being an economist and me liking Magic the Gathering.” The game involves figuring out what is the most optimal decision to make with the resources available. Magic is not unlike chess, Corey says, as you have resource constraints. Those constraints are the mana you can produce and the amount of cards in your deck.

The rest of his interests are equally nerdy, including collecting Criterion films, and “enjoying the occasional comic” and manga. Favorites of his include “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure,” “Uzumaki” by Junji Ito, “Berserk,” “Sandman,” “Preacher,” “Batman,” and “Saga of the Swamp Thing.” While Corey’s peers in graduate school were “drowning their lives in academic journals,” he was reading comics for leisure.

His favorite part in “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” is Part Four, and his favorite character in the series is Okuyasa Nijimura. “The premise of the character is ‘what if we gave arguably the most powerful ability to like the dumbest character?,’ Corey said. 

Corey also owns a cat named Kit. When he adopted her, he chose to keep the name that she had. “Who am I to change it? That was her name.” Corey describes her as “a goofy kitty.” Kit is rambunctious and hyper, especially when there happens to be birds outside the window. “I wake up every morning and she’s jumping on walls trying to climb on windows and attack the noises of birds around her.” 

For students considering taking an economics course, but worried that their math skills aren’t up to the task, Corey says not to go into it thinking you are doomed. In his opinion, most people are capable of understanding the math involved, but our education system primes students to fear the subject as a whole.

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