Faculty Spotlight - Dr. Gary Stark

Dr. Gary Stark, Assistant Professor in the College of Business, has been teaching at Northern Michigan University since August 2005.  Dr. Stark received his B.S. in Accounting and MBA from Kansas State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska.  From ages 1-4 Dr. Stark lived in Houghton, while his father taught at Michigan Tech.  After leaving the Upper Peninsula, his family continued to vacation up north for many years.  Dr. Stark then grew up mostly in Manhattan, Kansas and Ypsilanti, Michigan, where his father taught at Kansas State University and Eastern Michigan University, respectively.

He began his career as an Accountant.  After four years of practicing, he decided that Accounting just wasn’t for him, but he didn’t know what to do if he quit.  Due to his fascination with the human behavior field, Dr. Stark decided to get his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, which essentially is the application of psychology to work.  He feels that “few fields can match its complexity.” 

Dr. Stark’s move back to the Upper Peninsula was a situation that many would call fate.  He describes the series of occurrences as one that seems “too good to be true.”   He and his wife, Anne, were eager to move back up north.  Dr. Stark came across a job opening at Northern.  Just after he accepted the job offer, Anne found a job opening and accepted the offer for Marketing Director at Northern.  Both positions described their experiences to a tee.  With a background in strategic management and higher education, Anne was the ideal candidate for Marketing Director.  Dr. Stark’s position at Northern is unique in the aspect that it combines two very different fields.  With a rare background in both organizational behavior and operations management, he had the niche that Northern was seeking.  Dr. Stark primarily teaches Organizational Behavior, Business Research and Operations Management, and has sometimes taught Human Resource Management and Union/Collective Bargaining.

The thing that he likes most about his students is that they are fun, clever and funny.  He enjoys seeing “the light bulb turn on” in students’ minds.  He tells his students that the psychology of work isn’t very different than the psychology of relationships, school, and family and that real life applications can be found throughout the coursework. 

When not teaching, Dr. Stark enjoys spending time with his wife Anne, and three kids, Calvin, Graceanne Kedzie, and Holton.  Interestingly enough, his children are named after buildings at Kansas State.  He also enjoys snow skiing, cross country skiing, hiking, and reading psychology blogs and literature.