We bought a house in San Luis Obispo. Unfortunately, it was a time for buying, not for selling, and it was almost a year before our house in Woodland Hills was sold. Esther insisted that she remain in Woodland Hills until the house sold so I lived in an almost empty house and traveled many week ends to Woodland Hills until the house was sold.
Being a lecturer at Cal Poly was less than ideal. Since I was then 67, there was no possibility of working towards tenure and I found that my background was not appreciated.
In the first year I taught full time, teaching elementary electricity and magnetism (E&M), servo, circuits and various labs. It was just too much, so I cut back to half time after that. While my interest was primarily in E&M, I had a basic disagreement with the man in charge of this part of the program, so I lost my E&M classes (he liked to pretend that Cal Poly students were comparable to those at M.I.T., for example, and chose texts accordingly. I couldn't teach to the one or two in the class who could appreciate work at that level).
In 1987 I decided to retire again, so except for handling some senior projects and one transmission line lab, where I helped out when an instructor left just after a quarter started, I essentially cut my ties to the University.
The transmission line lab is somewhat typical of my work at Cal Poly. The man in charge of the class had pcalpoly the first one had been performed when I took over. I looked it over and decided that the class hadn't learned anything from it, so started the class over with my own first experiment. The class appreciated the change, but the man in charge didn't; he said that my experiment was too far ahead of the lecture class. I suppose it was, but I had lectured to my class before they started on it and I am certain that they were better able to handle the lecture classes later. One of the other teachers told me afterwards that he and I were the only ones qualified to teach the Lab.
Having heard that Cal Poly was short of teachers I offered to teach a class for free -- hoping for an E&M class. I was asked if I would teach an elementary circuits class -- a core class required for all of the advanced classes -- and there weren't enough sections to handle the students that needed it. I did it but it wasn't a pleasant experience. there were a few good students but the bulk of the students apparently thought they should be able to get by without studying. I had the impression that they could have aced an exam that called for regurgitating homework problems but they couldn't handle problems that varied just a little from them.
On to Retirement Years
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