Nathan Homer Ponder, son of Homer and June Ponder, was reared with his three brothers Paul, John, and Sam, in Ruston, Louisiana.  He received a diploma from Ruston High School and then attended Louisiana Tech University in Ruston.  He finished a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics there in 1984.  He then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied for a Master of Theological Studies at  Harvard Divinity School.

He completed his degree at Harvard in 1986 and later that same year journeyed to Trujillo, Peru, where he taught in a school for the children of North American Baptist missionaries.  The following year he returned to the states and toiled in the actuarial field at Fireman's Fund Insurance Companies (Novato, California, 1988-1989) and ICH Companies - now Swiss Re - (Dallas, TX, 1989-1991).  In 1992 he began his graduate studies in mathematics at the University of Texas at Dallas.  There he obtained a Master of Science in Mathematics (1994).  He then went to Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics in 1998.  His dissertation was in the area of stochastic processes.

After he finished the doctorate he taught for a year at the University of Montevallo in Alabama.  He then returned to Louisiana Tech University where he was on the math faculty from 1999 to 2005.  At Tech he taught courses in Calculus, Statistics, Differential Equations, Real Analysis, Complex Variables, Trigonometry, and Algebra.  He was also Project Director for a LaSIP professional development program for north Louisiana high school teachers.

In 2001 he married the former Vilma Galindo Cárcamo (from Chapagua, Honduras).  In 2005, they moved to Batesville, Arkansas, where Dr. Ponder joined the Lyon College mathematics faculty.  At Lyon he teaches the entire spectrum of undergraduate mathematics and statistics courses and enjoys the bagpipe intonations wafting through College Heights.