Russell T. McCutcheon, who came to the University of Alabama's Department of Religious Studies as its Department Chair in the summer of 2001 (and who stepped down at the end of the 2008-9 academic year), was trained at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario) and the University of Toronto, where he received his Ph.D. in the academic study of religion in 1995. He came to the U.S. from Canada in 1993, to teach full time as an Instructor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (1993-96); from 1996 to 2001 he was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at Southwest Missouri State University (Springfield; now known as Missouri State University). Although a Canadian citizen, in early 2001 he obtained Permanent Residency status in the U.S.