PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 28, No. 11, Dec. 4, 2008

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Faculty meembers, academic professionals retire

Between Sept. 1, 2007, and Aug. 31, 2008, 115 faculty members and academic professionals retired from the UI, according to the Office of Academic Human Resources. The retirees, their positions, units and approximate years of service appear online.

44 +41 + (40 x 3) = five mathematicians’ retirements

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

The department of mathematics is minus more than 200 years’ experience following the retirements of five faculty members this year. Robert Fossum, Paul Schupp and Jerry Uhl retired in May, with nearly 44, 41 and 40 years’ service, respectively. Stephanie Alexander capped an almost-40-year career with her retirement in June, and Peter Loeb retired in August with 40 years’ service.

“Professors Alexander, Fossum, Loeb, Schupp and Uhl collectively gave more than two centuries of service to the department of mathematics,” said Sheldon Katz, department chair.  “They have enriched the life of the department and the lives of generations of students through their myriad contributions.”

In this issue, Fossum, Uhl and Alexander discuss their careers and their activities since they retired. Loeb and Schupp will be featured in the next edition of Inside Illinois on Jan. 15. 

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Infinite possibilities Mathematician Robert Fossum, who retired this year after a 44-year career at the UI, is working on an invariant theory project and contributes mathematics to computer vision projects at Beckman Institute. “I have lots of projects in mind and still some research that I want to do,” said Fossum, who, with his wife, Robin, founded a distinguished lecture series that brings leading scientists to Beckman as invited speakers.

Fossum, who celebrated his 70th birthday the month he retired, made several advances in algebraic invariant theory during his career and is credited with broadening the American Mathematical Society – the largest professional organization for research mathematicians – into an international society during the decade that he served as its secretary by sponsoring joint meetings with mathematical societies in other countries.

Fossum credits the success of those endeavors with contacts that he made in Europe early in his career when he taught as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oslo, Norway, for a year and through faculty positions that he later held at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Aarhus in Denmark and the University of Paris VI in France.

The Fulbright experience in Norway was a calculated choice for Fossum: Both sets of his grandparents emigrated from that country.  Proud of his heritage, Fossum is the current president of Tronderlag of America, an organization of people whose ancestors emigrated from the northern and southern counties of Tronderlag, Norway. In August, the 500-member organization celebrated its 100th anniversary at a meeting in Fergus Falls, Minn.

Fossum, who speaks Norwegian and Danish, was born and raised in academia: His mother taught mathematics at the Farmington, Minn., Junior High School, and his father managed the bookstore at St. Olaf College, where Fossum’s uncle chaired the physics department and was a dean. At the age of 16, Fossum made his first mark in the field by winning first prize in the Minnesota State Science Fair for rewriting his high school Euclidian geometry textbook into non-Euclidian geometry. St. Olaf College also is where Fossum earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics. He went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan before joining the Illinois faculty as a lecturer in 1964.

During college, Fossum had a summer job as a painter, work that required him to scale grain elevators and a 320-foot radio tower. More recently, he’s been painting – and staining the deck, lining the closets with cedar and installing insulation and drywall in the garage – at his second home near Chetek, Wis., a Swiss-style chalet on five timbered acres. He and his wife, Robin, bought the property two years ago and try to visit at least once a month, even during the winter.

There are family roots there too, as three of Fossum’s cousins, who are retired farmers, live nearby. “They have red cedar growing on their property, and they cut it down and take it to the Amish mill across the road to get it planked and then bring it to our place,” Fossum said.

Professionally, Fossum is working on a project in invariant theory with one of his former doctoral students, and he contributes mathematics to projects related to computer vision, such as facial recognition, with colleagues Tom Huang and Yi Ma, faculty members with appointments in electrical and computer engineering and at the Beckman Institute, where Fossum also has an office.

“I have lots of projects in mind and still some research that I want to do,” Fossum said.

Fossum began a full-time appointment at Beckman eight years ago, and as a way of giving back to Beckman and the academic community, he and Robin founded the Robert and Robin Fossum Distinguished Lecture Series, which brings leading scientists to Illinois for an annual lecture. Following the 2008 lecture, delivered by Harvard mathematician and physicist Arthur Jaffe in May, Fossum was “roasted” by colleagues and honored at a reception.

Among other honors Fossum accumulated during his career, he was named a foreign member of the Sciences section of the Royal Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1994, and was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002. He also was chair of the Senate Executive Committee for two years.

“I came in 1968 and loved the place,” said Uhl, who joined the UI faculty after serving two years as chief of the Scientific Analysis Section of the Defense Intelligence Agency Computer Center at the Pentagon. “It actually never occurred to me to leave until I’d been here so long that I couldn’t.” Nonetheless, Uhl’s career brought many opportunities to lecture in more exotic locales – Australia, Egypt, Greece, Singapore and South Africa among them – and every state in the continental U.S. 

A native of Pittsburgh, Uhl earned his bachelor’s degree at the College of William and Mary and a master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University, both in mathematics.

Uhl, an innovator in online mathematics education and calculus instruction, brought UI mathematics to students around the world through the NetMath online initiative. Wolfram Research, developer of Mathematica, recently honored Uhl as the inaugural recipient of its Pioneer Award in recognition of his groundbreaking work developing Calculus and Mathematica courseware.

In addition to writing or collaborating on numerous research papers, Uhl co-wrote several textbooks on calculus and Mathematica. During the 1980s, he served as real analysis editor of the research journal Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society and served one term as managing editor of the same journal. Uhl also served one term on the council of the American Mathematical Society.

 Among the honors that Uhl accumulated during his career were the Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Illinois section of the Mathematical Association of America (1998) and the Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Instruction from the UI (1996).

He is proudest, though, of the 11 students that he shepherded through their doctoral theses.

“I’ve always believed that a professor should be an excellent researcher and teacher, and I have little regard for professors who claim they are too busy to teach,” Uhl said. “They’re in the wrong place. The best raw material that we have is undergraduate students.

“I’ve always been interested in teaching. I used to love to get in front of a class. Now, I’m getting in front of a computer.” Still active with NetMath, Uhl plans to develop more online courses on real and complex analysis.

Although he once bred a litter of eight Bernese mountain dogs that produced seven champions (“purely by accident, not due to my skill”) Uhl now has only one of the many he bred, 4-year-old Yodeler. Named in recognition of the breed’s Swiss heritage, Yodeler is Uhl’s companion on Uhl’s country property near Homer, where Uhl hosts barbecues, grows trees native to Illinois and collects beer steins.

 

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Geometry fan Although Stephanie Alexander retired from the mathematics department in June, she maintains an ambitious research agenda and remains excited by geometry after 40 years of teaching and research. In November, Alexander visited Beijing, where she was an invited speaker at the Conference on Metric Geometry/Alexandrov Geometry.

"People who arrive as undergraduates have not been exposed to the beauty and the power of geometry,” said Alexander. “My calling was to provide it.” And having “good students here, who really wanted to learn it” kept Alexander excited about teaching and geometry for nearly four decades. “The most important thing to me was the life of the mind, and this campus supported me.”

And in considering the ambitious research agenda that Alexander has planned for the years ahead, she realized that she needed to devote herself to it entirely – and retire from teaching this summer to begin getting it done. Her current work is in metric geometry and Alexandrov spaces of curvature, Riemannian and Lorentz geometry, and applications of metric geometry and convexity to robotics.

During 2008, Alexander was an invited speaker at several events, most recently at the Conference on Metric Geometry/Alexandrov Geometry in Beijing in November, and at Notre Dame University and Pennsylvania State University in April.

“I just got back from Beijing and it was thrilling,” Alexander said. “I thought I wouldn’t do much sightseeing, but I ran around absolutely entranced and am already planning another visit.”

In April, the Alexanders will be traveling to Big Bend National Park in Texas to view some of the more than 430 bird species that inhabit the area. Members of the Audubon Society, the Alexanders have been on several trips organized by the World Wildlife Federation during the past few years, including destinations such as Alaska and Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

During July 2009, Alexander will be a researcher in residence for about three weeks at the Oberwolfach Institute in Germany’s Black Forest.

Alexander was thesis adviser for six doctoral candidates and currently is advising two students.

“I shared in the general experience of not having geometry presented to me in a way that I could understand,” Alexander said about her earliest encounters with the field that would become her life’s work. However, once her interest was sparked, “I had to be a geometer,” Alexander said.

An alumna of Mount Holyoke College, where Alexander earned her bachelor of arts degree with majors in math and literature in 1961, Alexander arrived at Illinois as a graduate student shortly thereafter. Having earned her doctorate at Illinois in math in 1967, Alexander joined the faculty as a half-time instructor in 1968 and was appointed as an assistant professor in 1972 and as a full professor in 1992. Along the way, she discovered her passion for teaching.

Over the course of her career, Alexander was honored with several teaching awards, including the Prokasy Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Luckman Undergraduate Distinguished Teaching Award, each of which she received in 1993. More recently, Alexander’s contributions to her field through research were recognized when she was named the recipient of the Kuo-Tsai Chen Award for Distinguished Mathematical Research, 2004-2006.

Her lengthy list of written works includes two journal articles that are awaiting publication.

Joining her husband and colleague in the mathematics department, Ralph Alexander, in retirement allows Alexander time to leisurely walk a couple of miles each morning and evening and to savor sunrises, stars and trees’ annual transformation from green to autumnal hues. From time to time, their agenda includes trips to Chicago, New York, rented cabins in scenic places or wildlife trips.

But, not surprisingly, “for the rest of the time, I sit at my desk and work,” Alexander said.

Kobel’s retirement plans include to ‘teach from the beach’

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer New view Nancy Kobel shares the insights that she gained during her 31-year career at the UI with students in the business communications class that she teaches for Parkland College. “My goal is to get people to open their minds and see things in new and different ways, and I can do that through teaching,” said Kobel, who retired earlier this year as assistant director of administration in International Programs and Studies.

During her 31-year career at the UI, Nancy Kobel worked her way up through the Civil Service ranks from a position as a clerk-typist in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences to an academic professional position as assistant director of administration in International Programs and Studies, with a number of positions in other campus units along the way. Now Kobel is using the insights and experiences she gained during her career to enrich learning for students in the business communications class that she teaches for Parkland College.

“My being out in the working world, I can bring a perspective into the classroom and say, ‘Here’s what the text says. Here’s the theory and concepts. Now let me share the reality of how this works,’” said Kobel, who began teaching the course in 2006 and loves it.

When Kobel retired at the end of June, she rewarded herself with a “kicked up Dell laptop” computer that she’s using to add interactive and graphic elements to her course. Next summer, her goal is to “teach from the beach” – to lead the online summer section of the course while vacationing in Florida.

“I feel like I’ve been a teacher my entire career, but now it’s in a classroom as opposed to being in an office,” Kobel said. “My goal is to get people to open their minds and see things in new and different ways, and I can do that through teaching.” To do that, Kobel sometimes taps into the expertise of UI colleagues, such as Rajmohan Gandhi, faculty director of the Global Crossroads Living-Learning Community, to discuss issues such as bias and cross-cultural communication.

Opportunities for personal and professional growth, to tackle new challenges and explore different jobs while remaining with the same employer were some of the reasons Kobel enjoyed working at the UI. “Every job I had, I took on the approach that I’m here to learn and work myself out of a job. I like the challenge of doing something new and different. And when I had learned and contributed everything I could, it was time to move on,” said Kobel, who worked in various accounting positions in units around campus, including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications the Illinois Natural History Survey, the UI Integrate project and the now defunct Institute for Environmental Studies before she landed at International Programs and Studies about six years ago.

“That was the crowning jewel,” Kobel said about her job at IPS. “It took everything that I had learned – the accounting, the budgeting, the grants and contracts and the human resources – and put it into one job. Working at the university was an outside-the-classroom education, because each job added something to my portfolio that served me in the next position.”

One of Kobel’s treasured memories about her job at IPS was the opportunity to help people across the world by co-managing a grant project for training farmers in Afghanistan on sustainable agriculture practices to help rebuild the country’s agri-industry.

Kobel recently participated in the American Diabetes Association’s Step Out Walk to Fight Diabetes. Although she’d participated in other fundraisers before, “This was really a first for me, because it’s something that affects me personally. I was diagnosed with diabetes one and a half years ago, and it’s one of the reasons I decided to retire early. Taking care of my health is now a priority.

 “I got registered for the walk late, so I only had a couple of weeks to raise money. Bless my friends and family with big hearts – I was able to raise $400 in two weeks.”

Additionally, Kobel is co-managing the development and fundraising initiatives for the United Church of Christ Campus Ministry at the UI.

But she also is waiting for her sister, Patty, a business operations specialist at NCSA to retire so they can travel, possibly to Germany and Ireland. Their brother Mike is a security and crash and rescue specialist at Willard Airport and chief of the Eastern Prairie Fire Protection District.

Kobel plans to earn a doctorate from the UI in education or organizational development. While working, Kobel earned an associate’s degree in business management from Parkland College, a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and a master’s of technology degree in training and development  at Eastern Illinois University.

She also hopes to mentor children in one of the local schools and develop collaborative international initiatives with Parkland College and the UI.

“It’s like starting a whole new life,” Kobel said. “I had this amazing career and got to retire before age 50. Not a lot of people get to do that. I’m looking forward to what adventures await me in the future.”

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