Gerald Gunderson is the Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of American Business and Economic Enterprise, and Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Endowment at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, positions he assumed in 1982.  He holds a Ph.D. In economics from the University of Washington, 1967, with a thesis in economic history supervised by Douglass North, Nobel Laureate.  He has held faculty appointments at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Mount Holyoke College and North Carolina State University. 

Dr. Gunderson has published numerous academic papers, including studies of the cause of the American Civil War, The Demise of the Roman Empire, and models of entrepreneurship.  He also has authored columns in more than twenty newspapers in the U.S., including the Wall Street Journal. He has worked with national professional associations concerning entrepreneurship, economic and business history, private enterprise systems, economic education, and public policies.  He served as President of the Association of Private Enterprise Education and until recently was Editor of The Journal of Private Enterprise.  He was a founding member and is a member of the Executive Board as well as the director of the Academic Advisory Board for the Yankee Institute for Public Policy Studies. He received the Freedom Foundation's award for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education in 1980. In 1996 he was appointed by the Governor to the Educational Improvement Panel to develop solutions to poor public schooling in Connecticut.

Dr. Gunderson is the author of The New Economic History of America (McGraw-Hill, 1974) and The Wealth Creators:  An Entrepreneurial History of the United States (E.P. Dutton, 1989; Bearc Publishing, 2004), which Peter Drucker, the mentor of modern management, described as "brilliant." He continues working on the topics of global entrepreneurship as well as the growth of anti-slavery sentiment in the U.S.

• Gunderson, Gerald A. “The Nature of Social Saving.” In The Economic History Review, 2nd Series, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, August, 1970.
• Gunderson, Gerald A. “The Origins of the American Civil War.” The Journal of Economic History XXXIV, 4 (December, 1974).
• Gunderson, Gerald A. The New Economic History of America. McGraw-Hill, 1976.
• Gunderson, Gerald A. “Economic Change and the Demise of the Roman Empire.” Explorations in Economic History, (Winter, 1976).
• Gunderson, Gerald A. The Wealth Creators:  An Entrepreneurial History of the United States. New York,: E.P. Dutton/Truman Talley Books, 1989. Plume Paperback, 1991. Reprinted under the title, An Entrepreneurial History of America. Beard Press, 2004.

• Board of Directors, The Probe Foundation, 1986-1993
• Earhart Fellowship, summer 1988
• Editor, The Journal of Private Enterprise, 1987-2005
• Executive Committee, Yankee Institute for Public Policy Studies, 1987-
• Director of Academic Advisory Board, Yankee Institute for Public Policy Studies, 1987-
• Distinguished Scholar Award, Association of Private Enterprise Education, 1990
• Board of Trustees, Connecticut Joint Council on Economic Education, 1989-92
• Member of the Educational Improvement Panel, appointed by Connecticut Governor
   John Rowland, 1996-97
• Member of the Central Connecticut State University Institute of Municipal and Regional
   policy Board of Directors
• Member of Advisory Committee of United States Commission on Civil Rights, 2006-