Eric McDermott grew up in eastern Iowa. As an undergraduate, he attended the University of Iowa and majored in mathematics and education while competing on the cross country and track & field teams. It was his high school running coach who gave him his best piece of life advice, which he still practices to this day.
“I was a senior in high school and very focused on winning state championships and pushing myself very hard,” says McDermott. “My high school coach pulled me aside one day to remind me to just relax and have fun while I was at it.”
After college graduation, McDermott taught secondary math in the Denver area for two years and then moved to rural South Africa where he was a member of the U.S. Peace Corps for two years. He was prompted to join the Peace Corps because he wanted to learn firsthand about a different part of the world and do his part to make a positive impact.
“I made some great friends and had a wonderful experience volunteering in schools and coordinating HIV testing drives with local clinics,” says McDermott, who lived in a rural village where the pace of life was a lot slower than what he was accustomed to in the U.S.
“Most of the people in the area knew who I was after a while and were extremely welcoming of me,” he says.
When he returned to the U.S., he earned his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Minnesota. He has taught as a Lecturer at Cornell University and the University of Illinois and joined the BEPP Department at IU this year where his wife, Boyoung Seo, is an assistant professor. The pair has a cat named Noelle and love to travel, usually somewhere warm and with good food—especially Indian food, which he had never had before living in South Africa but started to develop a fondness for while there.
He and Boyoung visit friends and family in NYC and Seattle and like to travel to warm destinations in the winter.
McDermott has primarily taught courses in Predictive Analytics at BEPP. In addition, this past spring he was a co-instructor of the first-ever Business Analytics Consulting Workshop (BACW), which he calls an internship within a class.
“It was an excellent opportunity for the selected students to consult on an actual project for a Fortune 500 company as the culmination of their studies in business analytics,” says McDermott. “I look forward to the growth of this workshop in the future and am excited for the kinds of opportunities it can springboard students into.”
McDermott hopes that more students will get into this area earlier in their academic career—as juniors rather than seniors.
“This will keep the door open to potential internships and then jobs,” says McDermott. “Seniors often have a job lined up before starting the workshop in the spring semester so it’s harder to leverage it at that point.”
In his free time, McDermott enjoys gardening, running, salsa dancing, sailing, and scuba diving. As the world starts to tip-toe back to normal, he looks forward to a return to doing more of those treasured activities. He’s also eager to get back to teaching in-person. He recognizes that the pandemic, while tough on everyone, hit certain people particularly hard.
“I’ve always been aware that some students face greater obstacles than others, but the pandemic amplified that and made the distinctions even clearer,” says McDermott. “It makes me want to push harder to connect to students who might be facing challenges in their life.”
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