Life at Georgia Tech

My last day of active duty in the Army was July 4, 1966. I wanted to return to the university life somewhere and hoped that it would be in southeastern United States. I also hoped to be at a university interested in a guy who had spent two years working in mathematical physics. I knew it would be best for me to get an appointment where, at the end of two years, the Full Professors would meet behind closed doors and the Department Chairman would ask, “Do we really want to keep this guy?”

Good science and engineering colleges are found all across the nation. Many carry a reputation of having tough standards and are considered important in producing science, technology, and engineering. I knew Georgia Tech’s reputation even when I was in high school. What I heard was that all the students at Tech were guys – guys studying engineering. A change to that was made in 1952. The Georgia Board of Regents declared that women could enroll in programs at Georgia Tech provided those programs were not offered at other universities in the state.

My application for a position at Georgia Tech resulted in an invitation to visit the campus. The invitation did not ask me to prepare an introductory lecture. I did anyway. I met faculty and administration but was not asked to give that lecture.

I was offered a position as an assistant professor and took it. I wanted to stay at Tech, so I worked hard. During those first two years, I coauthored a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research and another in Physics Letters. It was probably these that got me promoted to associate professor after two years, as well as a permanent position on the faculty.

Years later, I asked the chairman why I was hired without my having to reveal the depth of my research when I first visited Tech. His response left me with mixed feelings. “It was 1966,” Professor Bert Drucker said. “Think about it. The Regents for the University System of Georgia would be pleased when we told them that we had hired a veteran.” Then he added with a smile, “Turns out, we decided to keep you.”

I got to watch changes at Tech. Two years after I got there, the Board of Regents voted to allow women to enroll in all programs. In that same year, Dr. Helen Grenga became Georgia Tech’s first tenured, female engineering professor. Within five years, she and some of her female colleagues in non-engineering disciplines demanded an important change: all swimmers in the indoor pool should be required to wear swimming suits! Needless to say, there was opposition to this inevitable change.

Students came to Tech with ambition. Those ambitions could be felt in freshmen classes. The students seem to understand that powerful things were possible. They had hopes and dreams. While I liked to teach the graduate classes in mathematical analysis, I also liked those freshman classes. So many different expectations were there that whatever particular things were in the student’s dreams didn’t matter. That they dreamed was what was important. The expectation of a promise to be fulfilled was palatable.

When I first got to Tech, classes contained up to twenty-five or thirty students. I liked this for I usually got to know the students by name. In class, I always addressed them as Mr. Jones, or whatever. If we ran together on campus or in community races, I would call them by their first names. Professionally, he was Mr. Jones. Socially, he was Don.

I understood that students paid closer attention in class if the class was conducted in a participatory mode. At the same time, we agreed that if I asked Mr. Jones a question and he could not or did not choose to answer, he could say, “Pass.” Without my making a derogatory response, the question simply went to the person on his left. Three passes from the class and I explained the answer in detail.

And there was the day when I walked into class and found it empty. There was a rap on the window wall. The entire class was standing on a ledge outside the building, looking in and laughing at their surprised professor.

At some point, Georgia Tech began the progress that was happening all over the nation. New dormitories were being built, libraries were being expanded, and large lecture halls were constructed. How was I going to adapt my teaching techniques when I was meeting with three, four, or five times as many students as in the previous classes?

I asked the students to choose their permanent seat when they came in for the second session. From those choices, I made a seating chart. These large lecture halls were not in the math building, so I had a walk to the class. While walking, I memorized a few names in one or two sections of the lecture hall. I may not have recognized Mr. Jones, but I knew where he sat. So, I would look up in that direction and ask Mr. Jones a question. The student who started wiggling was Mr. Jones. It became known that even in large classes with me, students would be expected to participate. The agreement about “Pass” still held.

One day, I asked a question in a large class and before I could call a student by name, one guy held up his hand. Wow! What a pleasant surprise. This student was volunteering to participate.

I nodded to him. “Thank you. Tell me how this process should work.”

He said, “Pass.”

I was stunned – he volunteered and immediately said pass. In fact, for a moment, the whole class was stunned. Stunned until the girl sitting on his left let out a shriek. Then we all knew. This Mr. Jones was notching up his flirt with that Miss Smith to one more level.

Good for him!

The class got a good laugh. The professor did, too.

So that I could avoid Atlanta traffic, my family had late dinner. Instead of leaving with everyone else, I’d often go to the gym at about five o’clock for a bit. One afternoon, I was running on the track. A student in one of my classes walked across in front of me and called out, “Trying to get in shape, Professor Herod?”

The next day in class, I told my students that I had taken offense at this taunt by one of their classmates. They smiled. I knew the student’s name so, right there, I challenged him to a race. The class laughed. He called back, “Sure. When?” I told him the date of the Calloway Gardens Marathon. The class cheered. He laughed and waved a white handkerchief. I told him the date of the next Stone Mountain 10K. “Next year!” he said. And “Pancake breakfast to the winner!” We raced. He won. And Martha fixed pancakes.