From 1980 until 2011, I was employed by the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department in its Environmental Division where I served in a variety of positions including environmental research director and principal investigator for water quality monitoring, construction impact assessment, and wetland ecosystem analysis. For 30+ years, I participated in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) assessment and documentation for numerous projects including Environmental Impact Statement preparation. I have also been in the aquatic resource conservation business since 1990 when my wife Wendalyn K. Welch and I founded Welch/Harris, Inc. We have successfully conducted numerous environmental analyses and assessments, faunal inventories, and status assessments dealing with fish, invertebrates, and freshwater mussels, primarily in Arkansas. I have been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biology at Arkansas State University - Jonesboro since 1990, where we have been successful in acquiring grant funding for master’s research, primarily involving freshwater mussel taxonomy and systematics, distribution, and ecology. Currently, I am the Curator of Fishes and Mollusks in the ASU Museum of Zoology. My research interests target phylogenetic relationships and phylogeography of freshwater mussels and fishes in the southeastern and southwestern United States.