Born on February 21, 1973, in Riverside, California, Carl Burch enjoyed a brief stint in Stillwater, Oklahoma, before moving to his home town of Ponca City, Oklahoma. In Ponca he stayed throughout his precollege career, ending when he graduated from Ponca City High in 1991.
Immediately from high school Carl Burch became an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. For four years he studied, graduating in 1995 with a B S in Computer Science. He left promptly for graduate school.
Mr Burch continued his studies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, studying for a Ph D at Carnegie Mellon University's computer science department. He left that program in August 1999, nearly complete with his Ph D, to serve for a year as a volunteer technology director for a community-improvement agency in New York City.
Starting August 2000, he will be an assistant professor of computer science at College of St Benedict/St John's University, near St Cloud, Minnesota.