Bishop, Charles Edwin : Home

Charles Edwin Bishop was a professor of economics and Berea alum who contributed to the study of economics in Appalachia.

Biography

Early life, education, and career

Charles Edwin Bishop was born in Campobello, South Carolina, in 1921.  He attended Berea College and earned his B.S in agriculture in 1946.  While attending Berea he married another Berea College student, Dorothy Anderkin.  Subsequently he earned an M.S. in agricultural economics at the University of Kentucky in 1948 and a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago in 1952.  Between 1950 and 1960 he served as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics of North Carolina University at Raleigh.

While in Raleigh he devoted much attention to research in rural unemployment and to regional economic development in the area. Based on what he gathered from this research, he authored and coauthored many bulletins and articles.

Bishop became a William Neal Reynolds distinguished professor, and his scholarship was recognized in his election as Vice President and later as President of the American Agricultural Economics Association.  He was later appointed Executive Director of the President’s Advisory Commission of Rural Poverty.  Bishop was also largely responsible for the establishment of the Agricultural Policy Institute Organization, which was largely supported by grants from the Kellogg Foundation.  He also became Vice President of the Consolidated University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Awards

Berea College Awarded Charles Edwin Bishop the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in 1968.