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John Kuhlman MS’49, PhD’53 and former student Tim Kaine

It was four decades ago that I had Tim Kaine enrolled in my elementary honors economics course at the University of Missouri as a first-semester freshman. He changed his major to economics and is now the nominee for the office of vice president of the United States.

I owe nearly everything that I am and have accomplished to the University of Wisconsin. From the faculty in the Department of Economics I learned to be skeptical (Walter Morton); I learned to teach (William Kiekhofer); and I learned to teach with passion (Edwin Witte). Some 24,000 students have gone through my classes, and I owe them a monumental debt for both my age (93) and my health (awesome). I was one of the last of the Wisconsin Institutionalists, and I was a teaching professor — research was plan B. The attached photo was taken at a political rally in Asheville, North Carolina, and it is of our reunion after 40 years.

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