By Rosanne Radcliffe

Randy Simmons, head of the USU political science department, has read every one of those books in his office. And he's written or contributed to more than a dozen about political economy. He knows a lot about cows, too, but don't ask him about that. / Photo by USU department of journalism and communication

Editor's note: This story was produced for the USU mass communication class "Beyond the Inverted Pyramid," COMM 3110.

He used to live on a dairy farm in Cache Valley. He used to trim cows' feet for a living. He used to hate cows.

Now, he is the head of the political science department at Utah State University, as well as a member of the Providence City Council. But he never expected to come back to his old stomping grounds. Nor did he expect to be an expert with the political economy, but he is.

Professor Randy T. Simmons went to Sky View High School. He said going to college was kind of a strange thing since none of his father's 14 brothers or sisters went to college and only one of the five children in his mother's family went.

"The whole San Francisco hippie scene was happening. Woodstock in '69. All of the anti-war songs; so what did I do? I joined the ROTC."

"I came to USU on a scholarship my high school counselor filled and turned in for me," Simmons said. "I had no clue what I was going to do."

Simmons found himself studying political science, but he said he didn't start out with an interest in politics and the economy right away.

"There was this background of things," he said. "I graduated from high school in 1968 and the Vietnam War was just heating up and people I knew were going to Vietnam and getting killed. Bobby Kennedy was running for the presidency that year and when he came to Salt Lake to speak, I actually managed to shake his hand. The whole San Francisco hippie scene was happening. Woodstock in '69. All of the anti-war songs; so what did I do? I joined the ROTC."

Simmons said he joined because he figured that after a two-year mission for the LDS Church, four more years of college, then flight training, the war would have to be over. While on his mission in Italy, Simmons said the draft did away with all deferments, including college and religious deferments, which he had.

"So when I came back from my mission, I didn't go back to Air Force ROTC -- there was no way I was going to get drafted," he said.

Simmons graduated in 1975 from Utah State with a bachelor's degree in political science. He said while he was an undergraduate, he worked for USU Professor Dan Jones doing public opinion surveys and thought that he liked that line of work. Simmons said he and Lars Hanson, who also worked for Dan, created their own business doing public opinion polls, but it wasn't anything that was helping him out.

"Business people weren't taking me seriously with a bachelor's degree," he said. "So I figured I needed a master's and I know I didn't want to trim cows anymore."

Before graduate school, Simmons took two years off to work. Simmons' father, Verlin Simmons, made a living trimming cows' feet. When Verlin left the dairy, Simmons said he took over the trimming.

"During my teen-age years he made me go with him. After I got married, economic necessity made me go with him," Simmons wrote in the preface of his unfinished book, Simmons Family Stories.

"But it's a good science to being able to take a cow's foot that has become this long," he said with his hands in the air measuring about 12 inches, "and make it this long (about 5 or 6 inches) and make it so she can stand again. And I hated cows. I so distinctly remember being 9 or 10 years old standing in the loading shoot and saying to one of my friends, 'I will not live on a farm when I grow up, I hate cows, I hate cows.' But I graduated with a degree in political science, what could I do?"

After two years of trimming cows' feet, Simmons applied to the University of Michigan and the University of Oregon. He said he received a call from John Orbell from U of O who said he was authorized by the department to offer him a graduate assistantship.

"I asked him how long I could think about it and he told me he needed to know by tomorrow," Simmons said. "So I called him back the next day and told him we would come."

We?

By that time, Simmons said he and his wife, Janet, had two children, Dan and Emily. Simmons married Janet in 1972.

He used to hate cows. He used to really, really hate cows.

"I thought I was just going to get a master's degree in a year and then come back," he said. "I showed up there and my first quarter I got really excited about these ideas, and they said to me, 'Now, you are staying for a Ph.D. aren't you?'

Three years later, Simmons said he left the University of Oregon with a master's degree, a Ph.D. and another baby, Mick. Simmons said he heard from Mack McKeefe, who worked in the water lab at USU, that there was going to be an opening in the political science department. In March 1980, Simmons said he was offered a part-time job teaching for that spring quarter. He said he was given a huge workload and was intent on being impressive.

"Apparently I was impressive enough," Simmons said. "I applied for the permanent possession and was hired."

Simmons teaches courses such as "Social Systems and Issues," "Natural Resources and Environmental Policy: Political Economy of Environmental Quality," and a "Pathways to Thinking" course in which he and his students discuss the political aspects in Shakespeare.

Simmons got into teaching the subject after attending a conference in 1995 on reading Shakespeare books.

"I got really excited about all these ideas, about power and politics and Shakespeare," Simmons said. "It was a total experiment, and it worked. So I've been teaching this class ever since."

Simmons was not the only one to get excited about these ideas. His students and even faculty members are hot on the topic and his teaching.

"He likes us to get really worked up about politics and Shakespeare," said USU student Megan Waterfall. "But at the same time, he is a fun professor and we always have a good time in class."

Miriam Cajal, the administrative secretary of the dean's office for the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, agrees.

"I took a one-day seminar from Randy on Shakespeare," she said. "It was very enjoyable. He is laid back and funny and makes you feel comfortable. Around here (the office), he is always making us laugh and he teases us to no end. So we just try and tease him back."

The Viagra mug on his desk in his office with a dead, limp flower in it is a 50th birthday gift from his staff that proves just that.

On a more serious note, Simmons' current research project involves endangered species and urban sprawl. He said his argument is to see if the Endangered Species Act is actually a good way to save species.

"There are people who make claims that the Endangered Species Act is the best act around, or that there is too much growth in the suburbs, which will reduce air quality, or water will run out, or transportation is overwhelming. There are a lot more," said Simmons. "I view myself as a professional cynic, so I hear all these claims and then go and see if they are true."

By looking at data, Simmons said one thing, among many, that he discovered was that by communities spreading out, commuters' speeds have increased and not decreased. He said he debunks bad policy claims. Simmons said he has a book manuscript on these issues, which he hopes to publish in the fall. He has written or authored or co-edited almost 15 published books, most of which discuss his expertise on the political economy.

As a member of the Providence City Council, Simmons said he deals with several similar issues. He has been a member of the council for almost five years and acts as a liaison for the council to the Planning Commission. He said in terms of what they do, the council primarily deals with issues that show up before them, such as development issues and city policy issues.

"He does a remarkable job with that," Janet said. "In all the four or five years he has been with parks and planning on the city council, only one or two people have called here with a situation. Randy handles problems remarkably well. I can remember only one time when he got upset over an issue, and it was with an attorney."

Janet said he handles situations well all of the time, even at home.

"He's real concerned about his kids and always helps them," she said. "He pinpoints problems, understands them, then is good at finding solutions for them. He listens really well. Even his siblings call him for good answers. I always tell him he should have been a psychiatrist."

Janet said Simmons never forced the idea of economics on his children, but his oldest kids, Daniel and Emily did follow in his footsteps. Both received a bachelor's degree in economics from Utah State. Simmons said Dan is working on a law degree and Emily is getting her master's in statistics. He said his youngest, Mick, recently returned from an LDS mission and is still "just playing around."

A student visiting Simmons' office could expect the phone to ring every five to 10 minutes or so. The calls are, more than half the time, from his children, or Mick will already be hanging out in his dad's office.

"We're a tight family," Simmons said after a short conversation with Daniel. "I never expected to come home [from Oregon]. So we're talking a major stroke of luck that I could get a job at home and raise my family where my kids grew up around their grandparents. Even now, I talk to Dan in D.C. every day."

Janet vouches that this is true.

"Occasionally they talk more than once a day," she said. "Sometimes it's business, sometimes it's just chit-chat."

Simmons published a book with Daniel and Samuel Staley titled Growth Issues in Utah: Facts, Fallacies, and Recommendations for Quality Growth.

Besides his roles as father and husband, Janet said Simmons is an excellent cook who enjoys gardening and the outdoors, so Cache Valley is perfect for Simmons.

"If you're interested in the outdoors, there's not a much better place to be," Simmons said. "And I love the outdoors. You have to make time for it. I have been backpacking in the Wind River Range in Wyoming every year since I was about 12. I am 50, and there are only five years I haven't gone, but many of those years I did go, I have gone in [backpacking] in the Winds two or three times."

He does the Wind Rivers without his family, but water skiing is a family event, Simmons said.

Although Simmons and his family have been going to Lake Powell together for the past several years, Janet said it took a push and a shove to get him to go the first time.

"He thought it wasn't going to be any fun," she said. "He brought his work and complained that we were going."

Ever since then, Simmons said he has changed his mind about the annual trip to Lake Powell and hardly ever misses the chance to go.

"I really like water skiing," he said, "and I would never raise teen-agers again without a ski boat. I broke a rib water skiing. I was just kind of pushing my abilities and I obviously went beyond them. It really hurt but my kids loved making fun of me. I was even reading a book that was so funny, but it hurt so much to laugh."

Simmons also loves books. His third-floor office of the Old Main building on the USU campus is wallpapered with seven bookshelves of books and books and more books, mostly with titles that have the word "Politics" on them.

"Yeah, I've read them all," he said nonchalantly. "One of my greatest advantages is that I read really fast. I loved to read when I was 4 years old and so my mother bought me a speed-reading kit. I played that a lot, and ever since then I just loved to read. Now, just for recreational reading I probably read about 2,000 words a minute. When I was in high school I was clocked at 3,400 words a minute with 98 percent comprehension. You have to work very hard to read that fast; I train my eyes and my mind. In general I don't read words, I read phrases. I buy a book [such as a John Grisham novel] when I get on an airplane, and it's always done before the plane lands."

Simmons said he reads every Louis L'Amour book he can get his hands on.

"I'm interested in his philosophy of life," Simmons said. "He weaves it in everywhere. I read him for his political philosophy as well as the fact that the guy can tell a good story."

Simmons said his philosophy on politics is that it is really a means of organized theft.

"When I say theft, I mean, unless you have means of creating incentives for people to do it, they are not going to involuntarily pay taxes," he said. "So you have to somehow make them. There is a huge body of economic literature that says markets failed to do the things they ought to, so the government has to step in and fix it. That's why I like it, that's why I like politics and the economy."

On the lighter side of Simmons' taste for politics, he said the taste of a good piece of dark chocolate could really make his day.

"It puts him in a really good mood," said Simmons' secretary, Natalie Rowe. "It's like you have to have a moment when he's eating it."

He said he remembers two really good moments with dark chocolate, one of them being religious. The details were never shared. The only other thing Simmons said about his fetish with chocolate is that "milk chocolate is for wimps."

Maybe that's because "milk" chocolate reminds him of his days back on the farm with the "milking" cows. Yet even still, Simmons said he would always feel the same way about cows the way he did when he was a boy.

"[My dad] likes cows," he wrote in Simmons Family Stories. "I don't. He has an intuitive understanding of how to correct a cow's posture. I'd like to kick her in the posterior.

"And I still really hate cows," he said.

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