Dr. John Seater Named to the Thurman-Raytheon Distinguished Professorship in Economics
The professorship was endowed in honor the late General Maxwell Thurman and was designated for a recognized economist in the Department of Economics in the NC State College of Management.
Seater joined the economics faculty as associate professor in 1981. His areas of research include macroeconomics, economic growth, technical progress, dynamic international trade, and monetary economics.
He teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the NC State College of Management, and received the 2004 College of Management Distinguished Graduate Teaching award.
Seater also is a Sloan Fellow with the Wharton Financial Institutions Center at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and has held several visiting professorships in the U.S. and abroad. He served as the associate editor of the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics from 1986 to 1998.
The Thurman-Raytheon Distinguished Professorship recognizes Thurman’s distinguished service to the United States and NC State University. Thurman was born in High Point, N.C., and graduated from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., where he enrolled in ROTC and earned an officer’s commission.
A summary of his military career, posted on the Arlington National Cemetery Website, states that Thurman was a principal architect of the all-volunteer Army, and is known especially for leading the 1989 invasion of Panama. Prior to that, he held a variety of staff and command positions in Europe and the United States, and served in Vietnam.
Thurman also held numerous key Army posts, including vice chief of staff and commanding general of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va. He headed the Army’s Recruiting Command at Fort Sheridan, Ill., where he worked to develop the ‘Be all that you can be’ recruitment campaign, and is credited with improved the quality of the average soldier and reversing the downward slide of Army recruiting. Thurman was diagnosed with leukemia in 1990 and died December 1, 1995, at age 64.
Raytheon Company provided a $250,000 leadership gift in support of the professorship. Raytheon is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, homeland security and other government markets throughout the world. Raytheon’s MathMovesU is a multi-faceted program committed to increasing middle school students’ interest in math and science education by engaging them in hands-on, interactive activities.
