By: Denae Herrman
2/23/2006


Getting up from his office chair, Malcolm Harris Sr. pulls out a tan Akubra hat with a dark brown braided hatband.

The hat, he says, is similar to a Stetson, and it is something he picked up — along with other trinkets, such as a small paperweight of the Sydney Opera House, which he later sets on his desk — during the three years he spent in Sydney, Australia.

Harris, who taught in Sydney at the University of New South Wales and has also worked as a senior postal executive in Washington, D.C., is now a professor of finance at Friends University. He has been teaching at Friends for about a month.

Harris grew up in Queens, New York, and attended Canisius College in Buffalo, where he majored in economics and philosophy.

Self-described as someone with a dry sense of humor who likes to think outside the box, Harris said economics was something that fit his personality well.

“It was a subject that was rigorous and logical,” he said.

Harris became interested in economics and finance in high school when he was on the debate team and had to learn about the common market in Latin America. He decided to learn more about the subject on his own.

Harris earned both his master’s and doctorate in economics. He began his career as a financial planner for an investment firm in Connecticut. He has also been the manager of Economic and Finance at the Connecticut Department of Public Utilities Control as well as an expert witness for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Throughout his career, Harris has taught finance at several colleges and universities, including the University of Connecticut and St. John’s University in New York. He has also taught part-time at George Mason University and Johns Hopkins.

Harris said he doesn’t remember for sure why he decided to teach, but it always seemed a natural thing for him to do.

Harris was trying to get a visiting professorship in Europe when he met someone from the University of New South Wales who helped him get a position in Sydney.

During his time in Australia, Harris said he gained a valuable understanding of the sometimes subtle differences between cultures.

“It was an excellent way to get to understand America’s culture,” he said, because you become more aware of your own culture when you are somewhere else.

For example, he said, Australians work hard so they can play hard, while Americans tend to just work. He also was able to see Americans from an Australian point of view.

Back in the states, Harris worked for the Postal Service in Washington, D.C., for 10 years. He forecasted revenue and volumes and also conducted the Household Diary Study, which recruits households to keep a diary of ingoing and outgoing mail. The study is the world’s largest primary market research on the mail. Based on the information gathered through the study, the Postal Service can better understand what mail is used for and how much demand for mail there is, Harris said.

Harris decided to leave his job with the Postal Service because he wanted to teach.

“Helping students grow and mature is its special reward,” he said.

Harris and his family moved from Washington to Wichita about five weeks ago so Harris could teach at Friends.

“It seemed like a great opportunity to be at a university where you could deal with students one on one; there’s a very friendly environment,” he said.

Harris had seen an ad for Friends in The Chronicle of Higher Education and decided to respond. He had been to Wichita before and thought the city would be easy to live in.

“We heard of Friends, and of course, we had seen the Davis building from the road,” he said.

There have been some interesting cultural differences between Wichita and Washington, Harris said. For example, he has heard students in the cafeteria at Friends asking each other what church they go to, whereas people in Washington didn’t focus as much on things like that. In Washington, people are impressed with their own self-importance, he said.

Harris said he is excited to be at Friends, but the moving process has been a bit overwhelming.
Much of his office is still in boxes; only a couple of shelves on each bookcase are filled with his belongings.

The Harris family is in the process of closing on a house and hopes to finish the move in the next couple of weeks. Harris and wife Jessica have been married for 29 years and have five children: son Malcolm Jr., 27; daughter Brigid, 25; daughter Grace, 21; son Pat, 12; and daughter Mary, 10. Malcolm Jr. recently returned to North Carolina after six months serving in Iraq, while Brigid and Grace are studying at Johns Hopkins and George Mason, respectively. Pat and Mary home school and play basketball in their spare time.

Despite the numerous honors Harris has received throughout his career, including an award for strategic planning in the Postal Service, Harris said that his greatest accomplishment has been seeing his children mature and make decisions on their own.

“Creating men and women who can make their own decisions in life is one of the proudest things we can do,” he said.

Harris also hopes his students will apply what they’ve learned and make sound decisions.

“Both the decisions you make in business and the decisions you make in life, it’s important you have a sense of where you’re going and integrity,” he said.

Harris said he likes to teach using business cases because they show how to integrate other subjects and apply them.

“Don’t be satisfied with just learning the facts, but learning how to profit from the facts,” Harris said.

Sophomore Joshua Schmidt is in Harris’ Principles of Finance class, which meets at 1 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Schmidt said he never realized how much there is to learn about some areas of finance, such as how to use financial ratios, until Harris’ class.

“He’s really intelligent. He definitely knows what he’s talking about, and he presents it in a clear and logical way,” Schmidt said.

Harris said he hopes students will remember him “as someone who challenged them and respected them.”

In the future, Harris hopes to build the number of courses offered in finance at Friends. He also hopes to contribute to the public debate on postal reform and build a dialogue with the financial community in Wichita so that he can gain a better understanding of the marketplace for graduates and how he can place them.