Faculty couples are not a new thing. They’ve been around for years. We have had three such couples in the Engler College of Business in recent years. Typically those faculty couples are in different disciplines, sometimes across campus, or at least down the hall in the same college.
But what if both are in the same discipline? That’s a rarity, and for us, it comes with the dynamic duo of Dr. Anne-Christine Barthel, Associate Professor of Economics and Decision Management & Hodges Professor of Business, and Dr. Eric Hoffman, Associate & Pickens Professor of Economics.
Both are accomplished teachers and researchers, as well as parents.
Hoffman hails from Titusville Florida in the central east coast. “I grew up with Mickey Mouse and space shuttles,” he jokes. He graduated from the University of Central Florida, and then went off to the University of Kansas for graduate studies in Game Theory.
Barthel is originally from Oberstdorf Germany. She studied at the University of Mannheim where she studied Economics, and serendipitously unknown to her at the time, also chose KU for an exchange student program, albeit slightly before Hoffman arrived. She too studied Game Theory. “I met Eric, and the rest is history,” she laughs.
In the classroom and online, Hoffman can be found in Principles of Microeconomics, Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory, and Industrial Organization. Barthel also teaches Micro, along with Econometrics and Quantitative Analysis in Business. Given the commonality of subject matter, the pair reports that out-of-office conversations often turn into discussions about Economics. This is especially true given that they are research partners, the result being that meetings seldom if ever have to be scheduled because they can happen while on their daily commute or at home. “For us, it has always come natural. It’s enjoyable and productive at the same time,” Eric reflects.
The couple met in the break room at KU, according to Hoffman. While Barthel choses not to dispute this, her first recollection includes a student outing at a local brewery. They wound up sitting bedside each other and talking, and one date begat another. They married in 2016 and arrived at WT the same year.
Faculty couples, though, the “two body problem,” meaning that finding two jobs at the same university. They spent two years of their relationship apart because they had jobs many hundreds of miles apart. WT expressed interest in Hoffman, but initially told him there was only one job opening. They ended the conversation at that point, only for WT to contact him a week later with news that there were suddenly two openings. They quickly accepted, even though they had no idea where Canyon Texas is located.
Today the couple is a blended family, with some of Eric’s children, as well as two together. There’s another on the way. Family life is busy, and will be for many years, shuttling kids to school and activities. A person could set a clock by watching their comings and goings on campus, because each day is highly structured, requiring them to be in specific places at various times.
Yet the couple manages to balance all of this with smiles on their faces, switching gears between work and home life, and still finding an occasional time for a date night. With their families great distances away, though, there are no built-in baby sitters unless their parents were to visit here. Hoffman and Barthel are committed to making it all work, though.
The bar they have set at school is a high one, and reflected in their course evaluations and publications. They hold themselves to the same standard for raising their family, demonstrating that faculty couples can indeed flourish. Well, as long as the two body problem can be solved.
Recently the couple appeared on our BuffSpeak podcast. The episode is available here.