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....

Electrical Technology and Electrical Engineering Technology: Roger Lehman

Roger Lehman, professor emeritus of engineering technology, grew up in Sanborn, New York.  He attended Public School #8, which was part of the Town of Lewiston School System. The two story school building he attended was located on the south side of the lot of the present West Avenue School at the corner of route 31 and West Avenue in Sanborn.  After 8^th grade, he was bussed to Lasalle High School on Buffalo Avenue in Niagara Falls, from which he graduated in 1947.

After serving time in the military, Mr. Lehman earned a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from SUNY at Buffalo.  The professor was recruited by Dr. Notar in 1966, and was lured away from a faculty position at SUNY Buffalo, where he shared an office with Wilson Greatbatch. For his Master’s thesis, he researched the application of Heaviside methods to solving differential equations.  Professor Lehman was a first class engineer, and a first class applied mathematician as well. He also knew a fair amount of pure mathematics, physics, and probably something about everything there is to know, or is worth knowing.



According former colleague Charles Fowle, “There are two types of problems in electrical engineering: those that Roger had solved, and those that were too trivial for Roger to solve.”  And, according former colleague Paula Greenwald,  “If you asked Roger for the time, he would tell you how to build a clock.”

Professor Lehman’s brilliance has also been noted by numerous lifelong acquaintances, some dating back to his elementary school days in Sanborn. According to former classmate and childhood friend, Ken Taylor,

“In elementary school, Roger was always showing up the teacher. On one occasion the teacher filled the blackboard with problems, probably in an attempt to keep the children busy so he could grade papers.  By the time the teacher finished writing, Roger had the assignment finished, and fired off all of the answers. When the teacher asked Roger how he came by all the answers so fast, Roger replied ‘You never mind how I got the answers, my answers are correct, aren’t they’.”  Apparently Roger spent a lot of time in the principal’s office.

Professor Lehman was also known for his resourcefulness, specifically in how he kept a wide array of engineering and engineering tech programs running - both during the day and night.  As division chair he was bright enough to know that it was cheaper to run all of the programs, than some of them. The public interest was also well served by having such a robust tech program, complemented by math, physics and chemistry departments second to none.

Throughout this great professor's career, countless students graduated with a 2-year tech degree, became instantly employed, came back to NCCC to study calculus, physics and chemistry at night, and then went to SUNY Buffalo to earn a 4-year engineering degree - much of it paid for by their employers. Such students had a great combination of practical skills as well as a firm theoretical foundation that has continued to serve them well throughout their careers.  Many of them are practicing engineers in Western New York.

More to come.....


Number of technology faculty in the early 1990's: 14
Number of technology faculty in 2016: 1.5
Year in which Tech Prep was cancelled, and federal grant money moved over to the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute: 2008
Year in which the MESA (Math Engineering Science Achievement) center was forcibly closed: 2009
Estimated amount funding for tech that was turned away over the past several years: $6,500,000.

Philosophy: Father William Warthling, Part I

Father William Warthling

In the fall of 1970 Father Warthling was hired as the first philosophy professor at NCCC. He had previously taught at a Catholic high school while on leave from his duties as a priest in the Buffalo Diocese.   Father Warthling also taught part time at Attica State Prison while he was teaching full time at NCCC. 

Ordained into the Roman Catholic Church in 1963, by 1968 Father Warthling was actively serving the poor in an urban church in the Buffalo Diocese. He also was active in the civil rights group “Build”, in which the Catholic Church refused to participate.  The Church hierarchy indicated that they had their own ministries, but Father Warthling apparently thought such ministries were inadequate.

Father Warthling challenged the Catholic hierarchy to become more active in such civil rights issues that were ever present right here, front and center in Western New York. There was plenty of blight and extreme poverty in the city of Buffalo, and Father Warthling had been called to serve the least among us. The Buffalo Diocese responded by attempting to transfer Father Warthling to a parish away from the urban setting that he so passionately served.  Twice the hierarchy attempted, and twice Father Warthling refused to comply.  By 1970 Father Warthling had resigned from active ministry, meaning that he could no longer serve communion or hear confession.

Father William Warthling was my philosophy professor in the spring of 1979.  It was my second year at NCCC, I was 20 years old, and I was quite confident that I knew just about everything - or at least just about everything that was important to know.  Having survived a few college-level science courses, having read part of an Isaac Asimov book, and having looked at a lot of pictures in Scientific American, I suppose that I had a certain smug superiority that comes with a bit of scientific education in one’s youth.

My first impression of the Father was that he was somewhat of an anathema. He referred to the resurrection as the “Jesus myth”, while mentioning that this was a philosophical term, and not necessarily what he believed.  Father Warthling also referred to his priestly garb as his “Jesus suit”, which he always wore to Attica State Prison. There was, of course, a certain honesty about him. The Father was certainly not afraid to speak his mind.

Although the historical record has him confronting the Church hierarchy, Father Warthling was far from confrontational with his students. I remember him as being quite amicable.  Class time was usually spent with Father Warthling introducing some topic, followed by some class discussion. He was always quite animated about what we were talking about. The eminent Catholic writer, G.K. Chesterton, once criticized 20^th century thinkers for being interested in everything but everything.  Father Warthling was interested in everything and everything.  His curiosity was infectious. In the world of ideas, Father Warthling was like a kid in a candy shop.  He apparently never lost his youthful curiosity.

Sometime around mid-semester, Father Warthing spent a class or two discussing cosmology.  He was quite perplexed at why some cosmologists could believe that the universe could be forever expanding.  This was a question of theological importance that had sprung up with the dawn of modern physics in the early 20^th century. An ever-expanding universe pointed toward a definite beginning, which is why the big-bang was initially unpalatable among some (but not all) scientists. I took the time to write him a “reaction paper”, showing how this could be physically and mathematically possible.  Several years after in 1983 Father Warthling took a sabbatical to further his study of such things. He is listed as being a senior fellow in the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, where he studied "Post-Modern Science and Theology." He later related to me that he learned, or attempted to learn a lot of math during his sabbatical.

At the end of the semester we did have a final exam, which seemed quite trivial.  I think we had to write something about Plato and Aristotle. He may have even told us what was on the exam. At the time I figured he gave us an exam just to say he did so, possibly to satisfy some departmental requirement.  In retrospect, I suppose the wise professor knew that something much more important was going on than the mere regurgitation of facts on a written exam.

As a fitting tribute to Father Warthling, below is what I learned in class, and what I learned after his class.

Things I remember learning from Father Warthling:

1) Plato was an idealist, and Aristotle wasn’t.

2) Cosmology and metaphysics are interesting.  Cosmology is an interesting interface between science and everything.

3) David Hume and some of the English faculty at NCCC were “empiricist pigs”.

4) Father Warthling was not a pig.

5) People in Egypt don’t eat peanut butter because it looks like camel dung.

6) Plato wrote an allegory about a man in a cave.

Some (but not all) of the philosophers I read/read about subsequent to Father Warthling’s class:

1) St. Thomas – read G.K. Chesterton’s book instead of wading through the Summa.

2) St. Augustine – Never made it through City of God.  I was more interested in his influence on Martin Luther. An interesting quote: “Nothing is too absurd to have been said by a mathematician.”

3) Blaise Pascal – A devoted Catholic who anonymously wrote The Provincial Letters, which was an attack on abuses in the Church.  I am sure Father Warthling liked Pascal.  An interesting quote: “Nothing is too absurd to have been said by a philosopher.”

4) David Hume – I had to find out more about the empiricist pigs. I concluded that empiricism, and my sophomoric version of logical positivism was more of a mood than a tenable philosophy. Empiricism, if followed to its logical conclusion, collapses into solipsism.  One cannot even prove empirically that one's memory is valid.

5) Carl Sagan – Technically not a philosopher, but many look to him for their complete world view.  Notre Dame philosophy professor, Fr. Ernan McMullen, used to point out the numerous historical mistakes Sagan made. Fr. Stanley Jaki also pointed out numerous mistakes Sagan made.  Carl Sagan wrote history the way he thought it should have happened. 

6) Carl Hempel, Carl Popper and Father Stanley Jaki – Father Jaki makes the case that the realist metaphysics of St. Thomas laid the proper foundation for the birth of modern science several hundred years hence. I read six of his books. Father Jaki had a Ph.D. in physics and a Ph.D. in theology. Science does rest upon metaphysics, logically as well as historically.  Popper deconstructs the notion of a proven scientific theory, but heaves us hanging.  Hempel tries to save science as an autonomous enterprise, but fails.

7) G. K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells – Ferocious debaters in the early 20^th century, and good friends off the court. Refreshingly honest.  I still read Chesterton, and watch the G. K. Chesterton show on EWTN.

8) Bertrand Russell – a very vocal skeptic and materialist who was as interesting as dirt.  His skepticism at one time collapsed into solipsism. Most of his later thought seems quite arbitrary.

9) Bertrand Russell and Gottlieb Frege – Analytic philosophers I discovered through foundations of math.  I can’t imagine reading Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica.

10) C. E. M. Joad – British skeptic who converted to Christianity at age 52.   Joad was very good at simplifying philosophical ideas for the man on the street.  He has some very straight forward ideas on ethics and theism.

11) Moritz Schlick, Adolf Carnap, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Einstein and the Vienna Circle – I learned the most about Einstein by spending about one hour reading ‘Cosmic Religion”, which was a collection of Einstein’s short essays.  I purchased this book at a garage sale I stopped at while riding my bike. Although a nominal Jew, Einstein was accused by his positivist friends of being a Catholic.  Einstein considered himself a meta-physicist, more so than a physicist.

12) C. S. Lewis – Lost one debate in his whole life.  Debated weekly at Oxford with the Socratic club he founded.

13) Alvin Plantinga – He rejects St. Thomas’ foundationalism, and developed what he calls “reformed epistemology.” Plantinga is a Calvinist who teaches at Notre Dame.  He tackled the problem of evil, and other objections to theistic belief.  Plantinga claims that theistic believe is “properly basic” in his work God and Other Minds.

14) Richard Dawkins – I didn’t spend very long before I realized this was a new permutation of an old set of ideas.  He is stuck in the sophomoric, positivist rut I was in at age 20.  He really rehashes a lot of old ideas, packaged in a shiny new book with a lot of science mixed in to give an air of respectability.  I’ll bet he became rich off of his books.  Largely the same shtick as Carl Sagan.

It has been twenty some years since Father Warthling's death at an early age.  Fortunately I had the pleasure of being his colleague for a short time.  On more than one occasion students were overheard walking the halls, or in line in the cafeteria, talking about the latest adventure into the world of Father Warthling.

Here is a link to a repository of old newspapers. There is plenty of information about Father Warthling's plight, but you have to search for it: http://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

Part II coming soon.......

Mathematics: Dr. Kenneth "Ben" Raymond and Lawrence Law

Dr. Kenneth Raymond and Lawrence Law formed the initial math department at NCCC, and were also founding members of the faculty in 1963. Together these two put together a comprehensive curriculum that serviced two-year technology students, and also students transferring to a four-year institution.   While these two were hired by Dr. Notar, together professors Raymond and Law influenced the next round of notable hires that included Samuel Richbart, Kenneth Burg, David Brown, Walter Echols, Arthur Hadley and Charles Seeley.

According to professors Law and Raymond, math department meetings in the early days were held in the pool at the YMCA in Niagara Falls.   Both had experience in local industry - Dr. Raymond at Bell Aerospace, and Larry Law at Westinghouse. Dr. Raymond had also taught high school math in the city of Buffalo, and at Erie Tech.   He was let go in the city of Buffalo before he received tenure – a practice that, according to Dr. Raymond, was customary in the 1950’s. It was fortunate for Niagara County that the Buffalo school system was so stingy and short-sighted.

Since 1975 the math department has given an annual award to the top student.  In the early days the award was funded by Niagara Permanent Savings and Loan, and then by Marine Midland Bank. Each year the bank would send a representative to give the award.  Sometime in the 1980's one  particular bank manager introduced himself emphatically as a good friend of "Ben" Raymond. At that point Dr. Raymond was fittingly nicknamed "Ben".

Upon his retirement, Dr. Raymond generously donated money to the NCCC College Foundation to perpetually fund the award. At that time, the math department voted to officially name the award after Dr. Kenneth "Ben" Raymond.  Plaques are kept in the math lab in C-230 with all of the winners dating back to 1975.

Like Dr. Kwitowski, Dr. Raymond had the rare ability to make even the most confusing concepts crystal clear.  He could definitely hold the attention of a whole class for a whole class period.  Former students have noted that although Dr. Raymond never seemed to be in a hurry, he could convey more ideas in the space of 50 minutes than perhaps any other math or science faculty member at NCCC, all the while working in a whole inventory of subtle and cerebral jokes.

An early creation of the department was a two course sequence in algebra and trigonometry that could be covered in one 15-week semester.  The class met for approximately two hours per day, four days per week, and for many years was taught with a Herculean effort, and masterfully by Larry Law.  It was possible to learn almost two years of high school math in 15 weeks.  The course was highly successful in folding non-traditional students into various math/science/technology curricula in a hurry, thus fulfilling the mission of a community college.

By the late 1960’s, with the hiring of the second round of math faculty, the department had already earned the reputation of having exemplary teachers. On more than one occasion, it was noted by college administrators that there was not one member of the math department that was less than excellent.   Countless students, for whom math had been one long period of confusion, were suddenly enlightened with a very clear and consistent exposition of the often angst-filled subject we call mathematics. 

Although the department was uniformly good, they were far from uniform in style. Student’s from that era remember Sam Richbart’s impeccable teaching style, Dave Brown’s high standards and his messy desk,  Art Hadley’s brilliance and sarcastic wit,  Ken Burg’s always entertaining teaching style, and Chuck Seeley’s entertaining stories from his days as an engineer. 

If this early math department could be cloned, there would be little or no math anxiety in the United Sates, and we could easily beat Singapore and Finland on any international exam – and, our children could have enough leisure time to still play little league and take music lessons. 

The math department also played no small part in servicing chemistry and physics.  As these subjects are highly quantitative, long term success in chemistry , physics and engineering is largely conditional upon math comprehension.   For many students, the math department has been the silent partner, giving countless physicists, physical chemists and engineers access to the upper most regions of their chosen profession.