Physics: Meredith W. Kellogg

Meredith W. Kellogg (1921-2012) was the first physics professor at Niagara County Community College, and also a founding member of the faculty in 1963.   He was recruited by Dr. Ernest Notar, the first president of NCCC, to create the physics department in downtown Niagara Falls.  He was later joined by Richard Panek, who served a supporting role in teaching a physics sequence for life science and non-science majors.

Professor Kellogg remained as the main-stay in physics until his retirement in the spring of 1985.  He was a quiet, introverted man, but his actions had a profound impact on a steady parade of young technical minds who studied physics at NCCC.

Diminutive in stature, professor Kellogg played the part of an eccentric professor very well.  He frequently rode his bicycle to school, even in the harshest weather.  He would often be seen in the dead of winter pushing his bicycle down the hall, frantically brushing snow off of his coat on the way to his lab in C-121 – most likely hurrying to attend to some tremendous trifle. The professor had been seen wearing several different helmets, all hand-made.  One was made of plywood and plexiglass, and another was fashioned out of a paper bag.  We were all convinced that this was part of some grand experiment that only he knew and cared about.

As any of his students would attest, the store room adjacent to the physics lab was kept very well organized. During a typical three hour plus physics lab, professor Kellogg would alternately circulate in the lab to help students, and through the store room to straighten things out, label, sort, take inventory, and so on.  As any perfectionist would know, professor Kellogg’s work was never done.

History has looked favorably upon Professor Kellogg’s labor, as numerous students of his have been very successful.  NCCC alumni in the hard sciences from that era always point to Professor Kellogg’s calculus based physics course as a seminal event in their life. Now, decades later, we still reminisce about that year-long struggle.  Whenever a chance meeting occurs, the conversation almost immediately turns to physics class with professor Kellogg. At times it was a love-hate relationship, but the work was productive.  Sunday afternoon and evening was always reserved for physics, and sometimes Monday through Saturday were as well.

Although we worked hard, professor Kellogg worked even harder – so much so that early on in his career, he lost a lung due to an infection brought on by being over-worked.  Professor Kellogg’s tireless effort, of course, paid huge dividends to us students.  He meticulously graded weekly problem sets, always offering exhaustive commentary, and thus paving the way for each of us to dig deeply into the unforgiving subject of the most mature science called Newtonian physics.  In retrospect, this back-and-forth dialogue in a small class setting was, hands down, far superior to any freshman education offered at any large university.  In the world of higher education, greatness can often be found in small packages.

Beyond the classroom professor Kellogg served as a local mentor to a whole generation of scientists and engineers.  Former students often stopped in to say hello, and were quite proud to keep the great professor aware of their accomplishments. Perhaps unknowingly, professor Kellogg had created a continuous pipeline of students at various stages of their careers, who in turn formed a loosely-knit learning community. The physics education earned in the tiny town of Sanborn, New York was arguably second to none.   Professor Kellogg was a one man show, and he had, almost single handedly, put together an exemplary program.

Among my small number of close acquaintances from the mid to late 1970’s, we had a physicist who became a real rocket scientist, a high school science teacher who was recognized for his work by the National Science Foundation, a medical doctor, a multitude of engineers who have designed everything from hydraulic equipment to power tools, and myself, who returned to my roots to become a math professor at NCCC.

In the few short months between high school and college, many of us traded in our dirt bikes for a set of textbooks, and discovered this portal to the amazing worlds of both Newton and Wittgenstein that sat on the outskirts of our town. We were quite average in high school, but somehow found our way as part of this great social experiment called the community college.  For us this portal was the great Meredith Kellogg and his colleagues, and nothing more.