Teaching at the Wright Field Graduate Extension Center

I had a fine time teaching at the center, particularly at the beginning. Many of my students were from the Antenna Lab at the Field and had been responsible for the opening of the Graduate Center (they had petitioned Ohio State to start the program). They kept me on my toes and I loved it. Most were war veterans and weren't much younger than I.

I was not on campus, so I could teach the subjects my way. I elected to make a course in Vibration Theory and Acoustics a prerequisite for the Electromagnetics courses, because it covered much of the same mathematics but in a simpler context. During the first session I wrote out notes for the course and handed them out, but later had them typed. I also taught Advanced Amplifier Theory, Non-linear Networks and Servo Theory.

One of my brighter students, Morris Handelsman, lived nearby and we became good friends. His wife's name is also Esther and the two got along very well (they had two boys at the time). When they saw our home, with its empty dining room, they suggested that they take their set from storage and let us keep it for them; it worked out very well. Morris finished an M.S. degree at Ohio State and later a Ph.D. at Syracuse. He became a Chief Scientist at the Rome Air Development Center and later a Professor at the University of Vermont. In this period he once told me that he would occasionally go back to my notes on vibration theory! Unfortunately, he contracted Parkinson's Disease and died a number of years ago of cancer; we miss him! We are still in touch with Esther and toured much of the east with her in the fall of 1988 and of Seattle in 1994.

On to Finishing My Degree


Last revision: 3/9/97

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