Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part III

 My first year at NCCC was fairly uneventful. Since I had a temporary position I could not see the benefit of starting anything significant.  I was also new at teaching, and it does take a few years to get the hang of things.

At the end of the year a tenure-track position did open up and I applied.  After the search I was assured that I was the number one choice. As Ken Raymond explained, he wrote a long page about me and a short paragraph about the other two candidates he sent to the admin. 

The Academic Dean, Dorothy Harnish, tried to undermine the math department's wishes by promoting their second choice.  I can't remember the name of the second choice, but she taught remedial math for us and likely would had to have reached pretty high to teach anything beyond that. I had been criticized earlier in the year by Dean Harnish for not having a degree in education. 

Roger Lehman, my division chair, went over to the admin and told them to cut it out.  Without  Roger's influence, my employment at NCCC would have ceased.  

I thought Dorothy Harnish was basically an honest person, and easy to work with, although she had little understanding of what our needs were and what we were trying to accomplish in math and science. What were we trying to accomplish? It is very simple. The underemployed, first generation college students, single moms, the disenfranchised, minorities, and anyone else on the outside looking in, came to NCCC looking for a prosperous career in math and science, and we provided the social capital for them to make their way in a very meaningful way. We never offered up a substandard education.  We offered something better than a standard education. 

Why did the math department recruit me with a full court press? The last few hires in math had no inclination to teach multivariable calculus or differential equations or anything else at that level.  Gail Bolster and Carolyn Goldberg were hired for the singular reason of running our remedial math program, so their interests were elsewhere, and they should not have been expected to teach these courses.

Mike Layman carried his weight by teaching some basic programming courses, Calculus I & II and also by developing a new Discrete Math course.  Mike certainly could have taught anything else if required, but it made more sense to hire someone with an inclination toward multivariable calculus, etc. 

Carolyn Goldberg had a graduate degree in reading, and an undergraduate degree in math ed. and teaching experience at the junior high level, so she was a natural choice for running our remedial math program. I had already wrapped my brain round spherical coordinates, Jacobians and infinite series, so I was a natural choice for multivariable calculus. No student would ask a question in multivariable calculus or differential equations that would stump me, in 40 years of teaching, and Carolyn could easily read the literature in remedial math and bring it to bear in our program at NCCC. 

Ken Burg told me once that the math department was reluctant to teach arithmetic and elementary algebra in the mid 70's when such courses were introduced to community colleges in NY.  He said John Hunter told the math department that if no one would step forward, he would lay someone off and hire someone to do this.  Ken Burg stepped forward, likely because he was the last one hired. Ken did a good job, but was a stand-in until Carolyn was hired. 

Speaking of Deans, there is one more story to tell from my JCC days. As soon as I arrived I taught a course called Computer Literacy for computer-phobes, and Introduction to Computer Science for Comp. Sci. majors. In the literacy class, students were to go next door to Blumenthal's and buy a "DEC Rainbow floppy disk." The cost was $6.95 and it was part of the course syllabus I was given to use. 

I explained to the Literacy students that there is no such thing as a "DEC Rainbow disk." There are only floppy disks, which can be formatted for use on the DEC Rainbow computer.  I told the students to go around the corner on State Street and buy a box of 10 disks for about $7.99 and I would show them how to format a disk on the DEC Rainbow.  This was Computer Literacy, after all.

The very next day I was called into the Dean's office, and it was explained to me that JCC-Olean was working out a deal with Blumenthal's where faculty and staff could buy computers at a deep discount, and she did not want me to "blow it."  One of my students was a sister of an employee of Blumenthal's.

The Dean was a stern German lady named Edna.  No, she was not wearing leather and brandishing a whip, but I did envision her doing so. I was tempted to verbally give her the finger, but restrained myself. I left her office, walked down to State Street, purchased a couple boxes of disks and passed them out the very next day.

Fortunately no administrator ever put my moral flexibility to such a test during my 38.5 year stay at NCCC.  

On the docket: Dr. Donald Donato. 

 

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College- Part II

I was hired full time at NCCC in the summer of 1985.  In July I was visiting my mom inSanborn and painting my Uncle Bill's house on Griffin Street. During lunch hourI rode my bike over to the college to see if anyone was around, and I ran into Mike Layman and Ken Raymond. 

Mike and Ken mentioned that there was an open position in the math department for thefall.  I told them I was not interested, since I had a tenure track position at Jamestown Community College. 

After a half hour or so of visiting and a customary barrage of Ken's subtle and cerebral jokes, he mentioned that a few more members of the department would be in tomorrowif I was interested in catching up with them.  I agreed that I would come back the next day during lunch.

The next day I showed up in my painter's clothes, as I had the day before.  My outfit included old jeans, a t-shirt, a baseball cap and a pair of boat shoes with no socks. I was also wearing a pretty heavy coat of paint. And so it was that I came to my "job interview" wearing no socks.  

There were 6 or 7 faculty in the conference room, all there to "say hello."  We talked fora while and had a great time.  As I got up to leave, Ken Raymond handed me a jobapplication.  I reiterated that I was not interested in a job. Ken said I should fill it out "to have it on file in case there was another job opening in the future." So I did. 

Three days later Mike called me up and offered me the job.  I again mentioned that I was not interested.

Eventually I did relent and accepted the temporary full time job. Why?  Well, one factor is that I knew and respected many of these people.  Between Doc Kwitowski, Dr. Raymond,Ted Georgian, Meredith Kellogg and a few others, my perception was that NCCC wasa place to innovate and probably a great place to work.  

Of course I faced the real prospect of looking for a job in a year, since the NCCCposition was temporary.  That was no concern. Teaching jobs in math were easy to comeby. Previously I applied to JCC, Mohawk Valley and Herkimer and received callsfor an interview from all three.  The JCC position had been vacant for 18 months.My brother Joel had relocated to Hawaii and I also considered following him there. I knew that being young and with a couple years of experience and solid referenceswould serve me well. 

One drawback at JCC was that I was teaching at a satellite campus in Olean, and could lose my position if enrollment went down on either campus. Sometime in the mid 90's there was a huge layoff of staff at JCC.  I think it was around 25% of tenured faculty. My position at JCC was cut and a skeleton crew remained.  A handful of their best Math & Computer Science people bolted and went to Alfred.

Another drawback at JCC was that I had received a mediocre evaluation. My student evaluations were well above average - very high, actually -  but my supervisor wrote that I was "deficient in computer science."  

I was not sure how to take that criticism. I had worked as a programmer in college. On Saturdays I would get my own work done by 9 am, which meant I would get two or three programs debugged and running, and then I would walk around the room helping everyone else get theirs running. And while at JCC I wrote code for my own word processing program that I used togenerate worksheets and notes for class. There was not much on the market at the time. And, I had a better theoretical background than anyone on their faculty, including the main campus.One exception might have been Karl Klee. 

 I was pretty sure I could out-proof and out-program anyone on their faculty, yet somehow, I wasdeficient.  I suppose there are politics in any workplace.

One vivid memory is from a meeting I attended on the main campus in Jamestown.  A faculty member stood up and expressed concern with how many faculty members had died of cancer over the past several years, and also mentioned how much stress faculty were under with allthe responsibilities outside the classroom - including, I kid you not, a committee on committees. One of the deans responded with, "We will form a committee to study the problem." I thought the aggrieved faculty member was going to have a stroke. 

 Aside from that I worked with a great bunch of people at JCC-Olean.  It is nice to have options. 

    

Forty Years of Teaching Math, Computer Science and Engineering Science at a Community College - Part I

 In the fall of 1977 I began studying at NCCC.  Four years later I was enrolled in a Ph.D. math program at SUNY Buffalo. I chose Buffalo because of their strong theoretical math program, and this was my interest - particularly mathematical logic and real analysis. 

At the time Buffalo's graduate math program was ranked 20th in the country.  There were the usual suspects at the top - MIT, etc. - then the IVYs,a few more like Stanford and Carnegie Melon, then U.B.  The plan in the 60's and 70's was to make U.B. the Berkeley of the east.  A hiring binge brought such greats as John Myhill, Stephen Shanuel and John Isbell, among others. 

In the graduate prospectus for U.B. we were told that there were no jobs in theoretical math. I didn't pay attention,not really caring in my senior year of college. Apparently what they said was true, since my friends who went on for their Ph.D. ended up not working in math.  One works in finance, and another is currently trying to get some AI certifications to find work and stay employed. A third did find work in higher ed at a small college that just closed. Another did a 6 month teaching stint and then hid the fact that he had a Ph.D. in math to get a software engineering job - a job not much different than I had worked part time in my junior year of college. 

I passed my first two qualifying exams with ease, having an interest in topology, which was two abstractions above calculus. It seemed to come easy. In the second semester we had 8 problems to solve. I solved 7, which was the most of anyone in the class.  A couple Asian students solved 3 or 4. The problem I did not solve was a box product topology problem, which was unsolved at that point.  It is still unsolved, as the professor, Scott Williams, worked on it his whole career. I did prove several theorems that could have been published, however. I proved several statements that would be an immediate consequence of the box product topology problem which is how I knew the problem was unsolved, because none of the statements themselves were proven theorems. 

Also in that semester I took an 800-level computer science seminar called, "Machine Inductive Inference". I did not have the prerequisites, but I had room for an extra course, so I took it. This work is foundational now for machine learning and related things. 

Before the class began our secretary asked me if I could drive John Myhill to the seminar, since it was on the Ridge Lea campus and Dr. Myhill did not drive.  I said yes. I also drove Po Cheng Chen to the seminar, who was a math graduate student and also did not drive. 

I soon learned  why Dr. Myhill wanted to attend.  In the first two weeks the professor, Dr. John Case, proved quite a number of theorems that were provem by Dr. Myhill in the 50's and 60's. It was a great experience getting to know Dr. Myhill.  He was British and did foundational computer science that built upon Turing, Von Neumann and other greats. Myhill also was a great. 

At the end of the semester Dr. Case passed out a stack of current research papers.  Our task was to provide a synopsis of our paper. I guess that way we would be reading at the forefront of research in that field.  My paper was written by a Russian, where he proved 5 or 6 theorems about probablistic inductive inference machines. Three of his theorems were incorrect, so I restated the theorems correctly and provided my own proof for each.  I could have published in that field very easily. 

While I was wading through all this terse math I also taught Differential Equations at NCCC at night.  I was a fun venture. I am still friends with a couple of my students. 

Rest In Peace, Doc Kwtowski, Nov. 14, 1939 – Nov. 11, 2016

The following was read at faculty senate on Tuesday, November 29th, 2016 in C-161 at 12:30.  There was a full lecture hall.

Good afternoon.  When I was asked to give a short speech in honor of Doc Kwitowski, I agreed without hesitation.  It is an honor.

To my Catholic friend, Doc Kwitowski.

Having grown up in Sanborn, since 1973 NCCC has had special meaning. At first NCCC was an expansive parking lot, in which I could race my bike and occasionally get chased off the library roof by security.  This was quite exciting for a 14 year old. 

Before long my older brother Joel attended here, and soon talked about someone named Doc. Some of his friends also came here. They also talked about Doc.  At that point I didn’t know who Doc was, but I did believe he existed.  His attributes were yet to be revealed.

During my senior year of high school, in 1977, I told my chemistry teacher that I was headed to NCCC.  She was a great teacher, no doubt, but she discouraged me from attending here.  I should go to a real college, she said. I could tell, Ms. Gervase didn’t believe in Doc.

There is a certain sense of historical irony here.  I was the only one in my circle of friends who graduated in four years.  I was also accepted into every graduate school to which I applied, and offered a generous assistantship. Graduating from SUNY Buffalo with an MA in math, I lined up next to Ms. Gervase, who was getting a second masters, and told her what a wonderful education I received at NCCC.  The truth did, indeed, set me free.

In the fall of 1977 I did start at NCCC.  Initially I didn’t take a course from Doc, but I did hear of him. Fellow students were always working on his problem sets, and there was a certain excitement surrounding chemistry at NCCC.  It was a given that you could study chemistry at NCCC and go anywhere, including UB, Cornell, professional school, industry, and so on. The science programs at NCCC were seriously serious, and no one could out-serious Doc.

There was a certain transcendence in the hallways of C-Building in that era. The skeptical empiricist David Hume could not have fully described the essence of Doc.  Even he would have believed in Doc, and run to Aquinas.  Ralph Waldo Emerson also would have also liked Doc.  As he once said, “Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.”  Emerson didn’t know it, but he was referring to Doc here.

With Doc, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.

Eventually I did meet Doc.  I took chemistry for the fun of it, as it was not required for a math/comp sci student. I wanted a well-rounded education, and that should include at least one Doc. The first class period left an indelible mark on me.  It was a beatific vision of sorts.  Since then I never lost my faith in Doc. I have the same impression of Doc as I had in the first five minutes of class.  There was a certain transparency about him, which pointed to his authenticity.

In walked this interesting guy, who I recognized as a strange combination of Lenny Bruce, Andy Rooney and Neils Bohr.  Doc had a cool, subtle, sarcastic wit, which only served to amplify his seriousness, and the depth of his substance.  Doc often remarked, disparagingly, about people who were all style and no substance.  His style amplified his substance.

For this 19 year old, Doc was the definition of cool, and definitely a stark contrast with anyone who taught me in high school. I almost said he was the Miles Davis of NCCC, but that would be wrong.  Miles Davis was the Paul Kwitowski of jazz. Elvis was the Doc of rock.  Coolness was measured on a scale of 1 to Doc, and it was measured on a logarithmic scale.  No one else can reach Doc.  They can only approach that standard.  I heard someone on the west coast reached Doc-1, and so is one tenth as cool as Doc.   I don’t believe it. It became obvious why Doc had such a following.

I never met Dr. Notar, but I have come to believe that the greatness of his era was that he begat many more eras. Like the era of Doc Kwitowski, the era of Graham Millar, the era of James Abbondanza, the era of Don Voisenet,  and Roy Summer, and Meredith Kellogg, and Bob Baxter, and the list goes on.  Each of these eras begat a multitude of success in various forms that otherwise would not have happened.  

We are more than a college. We are a community college.  We are more than the crown jewel of Niagara County.  We have organic properties, and are way more important than something we can merely polish and admire and covet.  We are a source of creation.   Creatio ex nihilo, or creation out nothing as the saying goes. Our students start with nothing, and leave with something, thanks to Doc and others like him.  

Doc created an era of enormous proportion.  Some of you who know him will be surprised to find out that much of that era was planned in the coffee room.  During one such encounter in the early 90’s, I discussed offering a one credit hour course called “math for physics”.  The course would consist of weekly meetings where I would teach applied math to physics students that is useful for the upcoming week.  This would free up time for the physics instructor, and give students a much deeper comprehension. Math for physics would also give students a seamless math education, bridging the pure and the applied, and expedite the transitioning of students into various STEM curricula.  Teaching math concurrently could also possibly decrease the number of pre-req’s, and definitely would cut attrition way down.   

Two days later Math for Physics was in the register, and it ran as a special topics course.  That was how Doc worked - tirelessly, with sound judgment, and with vision. We planned to follow up with other bridge courses for other programs and departments as the demand warranted.  This would have been real cutting edge stuff, possibly revolutionary. Working with physics and concurrency was my idea, but the general idea came from Doc’s sci-data course, which was enormously effective in chemistry.  It was also Doc’s idea to broaden the scope to a college-wide program.

Not long after, our agenda came to a screeching halt. The efficient cause was testosterone and a tug of war over resources, and the final cause was stupidity and a personality clash that had started during my bike riding adventures.   My career was marginalized, and so was Doc’s.   If I had it to do all over again, the only thing I would change is how hard I fought.  Doc was worth going on a crusade for.   I am proud to say I went to battle with Doc. There were some larger issues at hand. 25+ years later, look where we are.  With Doc, I was always on the right side of right, but sometimes on the wrong side of wrong. But, as the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton once remarked, only a living thing can swim upstream.  Doc swam upstream a lot.  

We can only look forward to a new era that begets many more eras. According to another great man whom I respect, Pascal Zanzano, the faculty, if they are allowed, will create, and much better so than a couple of deans.  Let’s remember Doc, but not live in the past. We are well into the era of Dr. Lindsey Rose, and I am sure if Doc looked down on it, he would say it is very good. There are better days ahead. Thank you. 

The History of Graham Millar

Having grown up 2.3 miles from the Tuscarora Indian reservation, and having cousins who are Native American, having attended Niagara-Wheatfield schools for 13 years, and also having a few Native American friends throughout my schooling, it is ironic that my knowledge about Native American history can be summed up by such terms as "Indian giver", "redskin", and a few Hollywood stereotypes.

Graham Millar was my history professor in my sophomore year of college, which was the spring semester of 1979.  Love Canal was an emerging news story, Three Mile Island was very recent history, the U.S. was yet to boycott the Olympics, John Lennon was still alive, and multiculturalism was yet to be a popular term.

I remember Graham Millar's history class (U.S. Since 1865) like it was yesterday.  Other classes have blurred and blended into the distant past, but I do still remember professor Millar's daily stories that were sprinkled about in his lectures. Once such story was his reminiscence about his days at William and Mary, and how locals still talked about "The War".

Most significantly, we read a paperback book with a gray cover entitled 'The Long Knife". The subject was the tragedy of the Trail of Tears. How I never heard this story throughout high school, I do not know - especially since most of the Native Americans in our school district had ancestry from North Carolina.

Like Father Warthling's philosophy class, the measure of professor Millar's history class was not in what I learned, but in how I saw the world.  Specifically, I saw the world through the eyes of a Native American.  I suppose this is the value of a great liberal education - seeing the world in a different way.  In that regard, no one did a better job than that great Scotsman, Graham Millar.

Remembering "The Doctor": Dr. Ernest Notar

Dr. Ernest Notar

The first president of Niagara County Community College was Dr. Ernest Notar.  A civil engineer by trade, Dr. Notar was formerly a Dean at Erie Tech, which is now Erie Community College.  The following episodes in history were told by Dr. Kenneth Raymond on May 2nd, 2013, after the annual math award ceremony held at NCCC.  Some facts were also provided previously by professor emeritus Dave Brown, and later by Dr. John O. Hunter, who was a faculty member from 1963-1969, and then Dean from 1969-1978.

Dr. Notar and Students
Dr. Notar quite often would pull a long-haired student aside, give him some money and tell him to get a haircut.

The Furnace
While there must have been a lot of excitement surrounding the formation of NCCC in downtown Niagara Falls, adequate funding wasn't always easy to secure. As noted by Dr. Hunter, there were plenty of contentious moments between the college and the county, and conditions were sometimes less than optimal. In such a climate, Dr. Notar showed how truly resourceful he could be.

During one of the first winters at Nabisco Tech the furnace broke down in C-Building.  Subsequently secretaries wore gloves while they typed, students shivered while they learned calculus and faculty became increasingly irritated. Out of frustration the C-Building faculty submitted a work order to have electric heaters installed in the rooms. Shortly thereafter Dr. Notar arrived and fixed the furnace himself.

Blackboards
In the early days many of the rooms didn't have blackboards. Some were equipt with  easels and pads of paper to write on, and the blackboards that were there were of poor quality and couldn't easily be erased. In a possibly humorous gesture, the early math faculty suggested holding a beer blast to raise money for blackboards. Word of the pending beer blast reached Dr. Notar fairly soon, and miraculously the blackboards arrived.

Dr. Notar, or "The Doctor" as he was called, would often ask the county for money, and it would sometimes appear.  Nabisco Tech was the pride and joy of the county legislature, and there no doubt were a number of photo-ops during the formative stages. According to Dr. Raymond a lot of the funding for Nabisco Tech was secured in this impromptu fashion.

Why would a gesture such as a beer blast be humorous? Everyone knew that Dr. Notar was a very conservative Baptist. In the early days certain bars in downtown Niagara Falls were off limits to faculty.  There also was no card playing allowed in the cafeteria. And, the early math faculty definitely were not heavy drinkers - but, they most certainly did have a great sense of humor.  They also had an enormous amount of respect for "The Doctor."

Dr. Notar's Legacy

Although I never met Dr. Notar, I have come to believe that his legacy was what everyone else did. The legacy of the Notar era was that Notar created many eras.  There was the era of chemistry with  Dr. Kwitowski, the era of biofeedback with James Abbondanza, and the era of CADD with Don Voisenet, and Bob Baxter, and Graham Millar, and the list goes on.

As my colleague Pascal Zanzano once said, the faculty, if allowed, will create.  That was Dr, Notar's legacy.  That is the measure of his greatness. He recruited talent, and unleashed their creativity.

Philosophy: Father William Warthling, Part II

Ernest R. Baxter III

I would be remiss in not mentioning the prior influence of Bob Baxter in my education.  Ernest R. Baxter III, or "Bob",  was my professor for ENG 101 and 102.  Although I learned some writing skills from him, more importantly, I began to read extensively outside of class.  That I was inspired to do so by any of these great professors was no small feat, as I had graduated from Niagara Wheatfield High School with an 82 average, and that included a fair number of 100's in band, phys. ed. and shop.

Writing class at NCCC was substantially different from anything I had experienced in high school.  In Bob's class, writing and reading had a purpose.  Not that he was didactic.  If anything, Bob Baxter has existentialist leanings. I am not sure if he is an empiricist pig. In any event, Bob Baxter is/was a professional writer, and I sensed that he took what he was doing quite seriously, so I figured I should take him seriously as well.

Professor Baxter was hired in the fall of 1970, along with Father Warthling. The year prior, Edmund Thomas was the chair of the humanities division. No doubt, professor Thomas - himself a very well educated man - had some influence on these hirings, and it was, in many ways, a positive step forward for liberal education at NCCC.  Ed Thomas also occasionally taught philosophy, and I have no doubt that he could have been a great influence in my education.

In the formative years at NCCC the influence of vocational/technical education must have been great.  Dr. Ernest Notar was a civil engineer, and was recruited from Erie Tech.  The school was also located in downtown Niagara Falls, which was still hustling and bustling with industry. A cursory look at the faculty in the early years also shows very strong math, science, technology and business departments.

I mentioned earlier that Bob Baxter's writing class had a purpose. As anyone who knows Bob Baxter would agree, he is a very outspoken environmentalist. Much to his credit, we were warned 35 years ago about the dangers of nuclear power. Now, after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukashima Daiichi, it turns out Bob was right.  What was supposed to be an extremely unlikely event, with smaller than infinitesimal probability, in fact happened three times in 35 years.

If nothing else, Bob Baxter and Father Warthling taught us all how to think, a corollary of which is to question authority. As we all know, there is this thing called the "human condition." While the late Father Warthling and Bob Baxter probably never agreed on the cause of this phenomena, we can all agree that it is the Bob Baxters and the Father Warthlings of this world who work to keep the worst excesses of the human condition in check, and in doing so, enable the preservation of our democracy.

More to come....