Professor of Economics Peter Prosper (whose name seems particularly fitting for an economist) knew little about economics when he chose his major as an undergraduate at Pennsylvania State University after serving in the Korean War.
He knew that he did not want to study science, math, or the humanities, and that he did not want to be an insurance salesman or a real estate agent. “It seemed to me that a good academic topic would be economics,” Prosper says.
Indeed, he loved it. “It's good stuff. It's all good stuff,” says Prosper about economics.
Prosper got into teaching much the same way he happened upon economics. During his senior year at Penn State, a professor had to leave his post to be with his mother, who was ill, and the department chair asked Prosper to take over his classes. Prosper agreed, and he discovered that he liked teaching. In graduate school the same thing happened — a professor had to leave the university temporarily and Prosper took over, this time leading upper-level classes.
“It must have been fate,” he says.
After earning his Ph.D. from Cornell University's School of Arts and Sciences, Prosper taught at Harpur College for two years before the college became the large university center that it is today (the State University of New York at Binghamton). Since he had decided he wanted to teach at a small college that allowed closer interaction with students, Prosper came to Union in 1964. This June, after thirty-four years at the College, he retired from teaching.
Prosper's teaching specialization — labor — also seems to have fate written all over it. All of the research that he completed as an undergraduate and graduate student was related to labor economics, and he especially loved teaching his labor courses at Union — “Labor and Industrial Relations,” “Labor Economics,” and his upper-level seminar in labor. He also directed the Economics Department's internship program and oversaw industrial economics majors.
In addition to his teaching and scholarship, Prosper worked as an arbitrator, mediator, and fact-finder in labor disputes throughout New York State and the Northeast. He became involved as a fact-finder and mediator in the late 1960s, when the law allowing New York State public employees to unionize was passed. Several years later, he became an arbitrator (arbitrators, unlike mediators or fact-finders, have the power to issue decisions that are final and binding to the case that they investigate).
Prosper says that he became involved in mediation and arbitration because it involved the labor issues that he loves and also gave him new information to use in his classes, which he did frequently. “I just love everything about the cases that I do. I love labor,” he says.
After managing hundreds of cases as an arbitrator, mediator, and fact-finder, Prosper has no plans to cut back after retirement. Instead, he welcomes the flexibility that retirement from teaching will allow him. And, of course, he plans to play as much golf as possible.