Overview

Mark L. Burkey
Professor of Economics
NC A&T State University

Brief Bio

Dr. Mark Burkey was born and raised in Sanford, NC; right in the center of the state but around an hour from any mall or university! After getting degrees in Economics, Banking, and Mathematics at Appalachian State University, Burkey chose to get a Ph.D. in Economics because he knew that he loved helping students master difficult material in the fields of economics and statistics from his work in the tutoring lab at ASU. 

Dr. Burkey joined North Carolina A&T State University in 2000 after earning his Ph.D. in Economic Theory from Duke University. Dr. Burkey has earned both the Senior Researcher and Outstanding Teaching Awards from the Deese College of Business and Economics. He spreads his knowledge freely to the entire world through his YouTube channel and at www.burkeyacademy.com, where his courses in everything from introductory economics through graduate-level spatial statistics have been viewed over 6 million times.

In the classroom Dr. Burkey uses active learning where he leads the class through problem-solving exercises, using a combination of mathematics, statistics, and computer programming to solve problems. He has mentored students competing in Data Analytics competitions, and served as a judge in A&T’s first analytics competition in Spring 2023 sponsored by TD Bank.

In the research world Dr. Burkey applies his skills in the field of “Regional Science”, often described as the study of “What is Where, and Why, and So What?”º His work analyzes accessibility to services, and how neighboring regions interact. His scientific work has analyzed liquor stores, red light cameras, payday lenders, hospitals, and even birds' eggs in a recent research article in Nature: Ecology & Evolution.

His classes are centered around problem-solving exercises that combine numerical solutions, graphical visualization, and oral summaries and explanations of what it all means. By approaching technical material from many different angles, it is possible for all students to master the knowledge. 

Since 2010 Dr. Burkey has been making YouTube videos for students at A&T and the world, with over 500 videos and nearly 32,000 subscribers.  Dr. Burkey also continues his education, working on an MS in Applied Mathematics from A&T. One of his students says that Dr. Burkey's “... enthusiastic drive for greater knowledge was just as clear as when I had him as a professor; he’s constantly found innovative ways of interpreting the material and reminded us to think of new scenarios to apply the information. It never felt like a boring lecture in his class because of this.”

ºHoover & Giarratani, 1999 “An Introduction to Regional Economics”