Steve Borders

256C DeVos Center
(616) 331-6569
BordersS@gvsu.edu

After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in psychology in 1991 from the University of North Carolina, Professor Steve Borders packed everything he could fit into his Honda Civic and drove to Austin, Texas. "My uncle told me it was a cool place to be - I didn't know anything about it," Borders says with a laugh.

He learned about Austin quickly while he found employment as a middle school teacher and coach of football, basketball, track, and soccer. He spent his summers at Texas State University earning a Master of Health Administration degree, and then accepted a position at the Texas Department of Health as a Medicaid policy analyst.

"It was a good job. I learned a lot about how state government works and how publicly funded insurance programs operate - a lot of politics," Borders remembers. After five years with the Texas Department of Health, Borders wanted to do high-level research and policy work and started thinking about earning his Ph.D. "A couple of Texas A&M professors I worked with at the Health Department invited me for a look at Texas A&M," says Borders. Pleased with what he observed, he became a full time research associate at the Texas A&M Public Policy Research Institute and obtained his Ph. D. in Health Systems Planning.

Borders is one of the newest faculty members of the School of Public and Nonprofit Administration. Integral to the M.H.A. program, Borders not only teaches health policy, financial management, and research methods but is also researching the causes of access barriers to prenatal care for Medicaid patients.

For students interested in pursuing a career in health administration, Borders says, "I think the opportunities are just - the sky's the limit. Students first need to think outside of working in the hospital - the real opportunities are in managed care, outpatient services, long term care, and practice management." Borders adds, "Especially for the those students with a clinical degree, matching the M.H.A. to the clinical degree will make them 'golden'." Borders sees the future of healthcare as a more efficient system with people trained in business skills and healthcare skills. "Healthcare is a very esoteric business and the M.H.A. is healthcare industry specific," he notes.

When he's not researching or teaching, Borders enjoys sailing with his wife and friends and spent part of his 2005 summer as a first-time captain of a 47-foot catamaran sailing around the British Virgin Islands.

Steve provided the following information for his personal profile:

• The book I would recommend to friends ... is the book I'm currently reading: Nickeled and Dimed, but I would also recommend Killing Pablo and Fast Food Nation.
• If I was not a professor I would be ... A sailboat captain sailing the Caribbean
• If I lived 100 years ago, I would be working on inventing ... Air conditioning. I lived in Texas for 10 years.
• My best advise to students is ... read widely and voraciously. Apply yourself in your foreign language class. Learning and speaking a foreign language will open the world unimaginable possibilities.