DONALD L SPARKS, PhD
Dr Donald L Sparks came to the Citadel in 1986 and is Professor of Economics in the School of Business Administration. During his career at the Citadel Dr Sparks has been named MBA Professor of the Year three times, and has earned three Fulbright Teaching and Research Awards (at the University of Swaziland in 1996-97 and 2003, and at the University of Maribor, Slovenia in 2005). Dr Sparks was the Chairman of the Economics Department and a Visiting Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo during 2000-2001. He has taught in Stetson University's Summer Business Program in Innsbruck, Austria each summer since 2000. Since 1990 Dr Sparks has continued to teach several times a year at the J F Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Ft Bragg, NC, where he trains officers who are being assigned duty in sub-Saharan Africa.
Dr Sparks has written several economics textbooks; he has contributed to the internationally acclaimed Africa South of the Sahara Yearbook (published in London by Europa Press) since 1988; and, has written over a dozen scholarly articles concerning economic issues in sub-Saharan Africa. His book, Namibia: The Nation After Independence received the Academic Book of the Year Award from the journal Choice. He is a frequent visitor to sub-Saharan Africa, where he has given lectures and presentations for the US Department of State in a dozen countries in the region. He has completed consultancies for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (in Vienna), the Economist Intelligence Unit (in London), the United Nations Council for Namibia (New York) and a number of local organizations, including the Coastal Conservation League.
Before coming to the Citadel, Dr Sparks served as the Regional Economist for Africa at the Department of State in Washington, DC and as a Staff Assistant to Senator Ernest F Hollings.
Dr Sparks received his MA and PhD from the University of London, under the supervision of the Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies. He received his BA from the George Washington University, Washington, DC, in International Affairs, and completed courses in economics or African Studies at Howard University, Georgetown University and University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr Sparks was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1953 and is married to Katherine Saenger, DVM, and has a daughter Sarah, who recently graduated from UCLA and is completing a Congress-Bundestag Exchange Fellowship in Berlin and a son, Laker who is attending the University of California, Santa Cruz.