Former Faculty and Staff
Former Faculty and Staff
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I was a member of the Department of Physics from 1965
until retirement in 1989, serving as chairman for 17 years starting in 1965, the second
year after the formation of the Department.
I received the B.S.(1939, summa cum laude) from the University of Washington in Seattle and the Ph.D.(1942) from the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. I worked for the National Defense Research Committee and then for a year as an Instructor at the University of Illinois, after which I worked for the Metallurgical Lab, University of Chicago, until the end of World War II. I was awarded a Frank B. Jewett fellowship (Bell Labs) on which I spent the 1945-46 year at Yale University with Lars Onsager (Nobelist). For the next 19 years I was a professor of physics at Kansas State University. During this period I had a two-year leave at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, with Ilya Prigogine (now a Nobelist and a baron), and for three summers I was a Research Physicist at the U.S. Naval Defense Lab in San Francisco.
During my tenure at Cortland I was a Visiting Professor at: SUNY Binghamton (second semester 1967-68); Professor at SUNY Binghamton (joint appointment with Cortland, 1968-71); Visiting
Professor at Cornell University, (June 1973 to January 1974); and a participant, from January to June 1981 at Moscow State University (U.S.S.R.), in the SUNY-Moscow State University Faculty Exchange. I have been a member of the National Council of the American Association of University Professors (1963-66)and of its National Committee C (1965—68, 1968—71).
My research interests are statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and quantum theory. I have some forty papers published, mainly in The Physical Review, Journal of Mathematical Physics, Journal of Chemical Physics, Foundations of Physics, and Physica. I am a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From 1976 to 1979 I was an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Physics. Since September 1974 I have been a SUNY Faculty Exchange Scholar.
The primary task faced on arriving at Cortland was establishing the new physics department. We were a small faculty originally: Hiram Bleecker, Ram Chaturvedi, Stanley Kullman, and myself. We developed an undergraduate degree program designed to bring physics majors to a level of preparation to enter graduate programs at the new University Centers of SUNY. This entailed instruction in all the major areas of physics. Also, courses were provided for non-majors; these generated the student credit hours needed to maintain support for the department - we were always plagued by the problem of low numbers of majors in justifying our existence as a department. But, hey!, what would a liberal-arts college be without a physics department? This problem was alleviated somewhat when we developed 3+2 programs with engineering colleges, programs which attracted many new major students. Most of the curriculum that we established in the early days remains today. I am please and proud that many of our graduates have acquitted themselves well.
Since retirement Genevieve, my wife for 52 years, and I have been living in Seattle. Our daughter Evelyn works in child care in Vancouver, B.C.; our son David is an M.D., Professor of Medicine at UCLA; and our son Michael is Professor of Architecture and City Planning at the University of British Columbia. We enjoy five grandchildren.
Boris Leaf died in Seattle, Washington on April 1, 2008.
I came to the Physics Department through the fields of engineering and physical chemistry. I have a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry, both from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. My research training is in X-Ray Crystallography which is an area of specialization for many chemists, physicists and materials scientists. Following the completion of my doctorate I spent two years at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, doing post-doctoral research on crystal and molecular structure via x-ray and neutron diffraction techniques.
After coming to Cortland I taught many courses in both the chemistry and physics departments, and in particular I taught the applied courses Applied Mechanics and Engineering Thermodynamics for our 3 + 2 engineering program. I served as the coordinator of that program for several years. I also served as Chair of the Physics Department for six years.
More recently I was interested in adapting to Cortland new strategies to enhance learning in undergraduate physics courses. I participated in several workshops that address such strategies as well as research in physics education. In particular, I was instrumental in obtaining and setting up a microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL) for the physics department that allows students to perform hands-on experiments interactively with the results displayed on the computer in real time. This provides the students with the opportunity to make and test hypotheses involving physical concepts in a matter of minutes rather than hours, and with the elimination of most of the laborious mathematical calculations that often obscure the concepts.
I was a project participant along with other faculty in the math, education and all of the science departments in the NSF grant "Restructuring Math/Science/Pedagogy Experiences for Pre K-6 Teachers. The purpose of that grant was to develop new curricular materials in the math/science areas for elementary education majors that emphasize hands-on learning and constructivist principles. I was most directly involved in developing the materials for the physical science course component of the new curriculum. The ultimate goal of this grant is to improve the teaching of mathematics and science in the elementary schools.
Kent A. Klanderman
E-mail: klanderman@snycorva.cortland.edu
I joined the Physics Department in 1965 as an Associate Professor and served the school of Arts and Sciences for four decades. My research interests have been in the areas of atomic and nuclear physics, which I pursued during sabbatical leaves at Henan Normal University in Xinxiang, China (1993); SUNY Albany (1986), Cornell University (1980) and Rice University (1973). I did research at Oak Ridge National Lab, Brookhaven National Lab, Argonne National Lab, and Pacific Northwest Lab during the summers. I co-authored over two dozen papers published in national and international journals and presented over seventy papers at professional meetings. I was the recipient of several awards, including ones from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the SUNY Research Foundation.
I was actively involved in faculty governance, both at SUNY Cortland and the State University of New York. Besides serving as Senator in both the SUNY Cortland and SUNY Faculty Senates, I also served as the Chair of the SUNY Cortland Faculty Senate in 1986 and 2005. In his book, Cortland College, an Illustrated History (1991) Dr. Leonard Ralston mentions that "Ram P. Chaturvedi is noted for multi-part questions at faculty meetings and an inventive use of the English language..."
I have been a member of several scientific societies including APS, AAPT, AAAS, Sigma Xi, and Sigma A Sigma. I served as President of the AAPT/NYSS from 1991-92 and Zone 2 SPS (APS) Advisor for six years.
Before joining SUNY Cortland I spent a year (1964) at SUNY Buffalo. Prior to that I was a lecturer in Punjab University, Chandigarh, India (1963). I received my Ph.D. (Nuclear Physics) with distinction in 1962 from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada). His M.Sc. (1955) and B.Sc. (1953) were awarded by Agra University, Agra, India, where I also served as lecturer in Physics from 1955-59.
I was born in a small remote village, Chandikara (U.P.) in North Central India in 1931. Saroj and I were married in 1964 and came to visit the U.S. for a year. It is obvious that the year has more than 365 days. I have two grown daughters, Anjali and Anupama, both lawyers now living outside Washington, D.C.
I came to SUNY Cortland in 1973 and retired in 2008 after 35 years in the
classroom. I was the chairman of the Physics Department for the last 13
years of my career.
I received my B.A.(1964, Phi Beta Kappa) and Ph.D.(1969, Sigma Xi) from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. I spent two and a half years at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, and one year at Rice University in Houston, Texas, as a post-doctoral research fellow before coming to SUNY Cortland in 1973. My research work derived from an interest in particle accelerators. My work at Hopkins and Purdue was in nuclear physics and gamma-ray spectroscopy. Later, at Rice and then Cortland my work focused on applications of x-ray spectroscopy (ion-atom interactions) and trace element analysis of biological samples. While at Cortland my research used the Cortland 400 keV VandeGraaff accelerator, the Oak Ridge Tandem VandeGraaff Accelerator Laboratory, the Brooklyn National Synchrotron Light Source, the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, and the North Texas State Accelerator Laboratory.
My teaching interests centered around electricity and magnetism, electronics, general physics, physics laboratory experiments, computer programming, and secondary science teacher education. I like to write and all of the laboratory manuals used in the Department, as of my retirement, were written by me. While I had no formal training in computers, I spent a fair amount of time around them for purposes of data analysis. I learned to program when I was 19, working for the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington D.C. In those days, a room-sized mainframe computer had far less power and speed than what you have on your desk today and cost thousands of times more. I was interested in teacher education from the beginning of my career. In 1988 and 1989 Ram Chaturvedi and I held an NSF Summer Institute in Modern Physics for regional high school physics teachers whose primary specialty was not physics. This NSF Enrichment Program was later cited by the Director of the National Science Foundation as an example of an innovative program in teacher training. I am proud to say that over the span of my career the Physics Department at SUNY Cortland had a dozen students go on to earn the Ph.D. in various fields. Finally, I was a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1986.
As the chairman of a department with declining enrollment I reluctantly oversaw a reduction in staff from five to three full-time members by the year 2000. Subsequent increases in enrollment in recent years have seen the Physics Department grow to four full-time members. I have been actively involved in NCATE accreditation of our adolescent physics education programs, Middle States review of the college, state-wide recertification of our adolescent physics education programs, and state review of the Physics Department. As a faculty member I founded the Computer Applications Minor and served as its Coordinator for several years, taking the program from two or three students to sixty. I founded and then coordinated the Earth and Sky Freshmen Interest Group for several years. Over the years I served on many of Cortland Faculty Senate standing committees including the Faculty Senate and the all-college General Education Committee. In 1982 I was a member of the committee which implemented the current General Education Program at Cortland. I am a former chairman of the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee and the Math/Science Personnel Committee. A review of my career is given at wheelerretirement.pdf. My Vita is given at wheelervita.pdf
My wife Amy and I lived in Cortland for several years and now live in Ithaca, New York. Amy has a B.A. from Vassar College, an MAT from the Johns Hopkins University, and an M.S. in Reading from SUNY Cortland. She has enjoyed a varied career as a high school English teacher, reading volunteer in elementary school, librarian, college development researcher, and has been involved with various business and volunteer organizations. She is an accomplished quilter and loves to garden. Our son Richard graduated from Hunter College with a dual major in Art and History and a minor in Geography. Later he received a degree in fashion design from the Fashion Institute of Technology. After a ten year career in fashion in New York City, ending at Ann Taylor as a designer, he earned a masters degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University. He now lives in Los Angeles and works for the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) in Redlands, California. Following 9/11 Richard volunteered and is a member of the United States Army Reserve. His current interests are centered around security applications of Global Positioning Systems (GPS). In one of those coincidences that sometimes happen, I was a student trainee with the Naval Weapons Laboratory in Dahlgren, Virginia in the summer of 1960 when that laboratory was studying the shape of the Earth using Doppler shift data received from the Vanguard 2 satellite. My role was extremely minor, I was only 17 years old. But, I plotted the orbital parameters of this satellite from world-wide telemetry data transmitted to Dahlgren. This research led to the discovery that the Earth was pear shaped, not just spherical or oblate, and makes possible modern GPS systems of value to both commercial and military users.
As the former Chairman of the Physics Department, I would be happy to discuss the Physics Programs at SUNY Cortland with any interested student. The Physics Department at SUNY Cortland is a small but active Department which, over the years, has sent several students on for graduate education, careers in physics education, and interesting jobs in industry. Feel free to contact me at:
Richard M. Wheeler
Emeritus
Professor and Chairman of the Physics Department
E-mail: wheeler@cortland.edu
May 8, 2008
I am proud to have been both a Spartan (B.S, Michigan State
University, 1984) and an Orangeman (Ph.D. in Solid State Physics, 1991, Syracuse
University). At Syracuse University my research training was in the electronic and
physical properties of ultra-thin films. I measured the electronic band structure and
lattice structure of layers of mercury an atom or two thick. Much of this work was carried
out at the Synchrotron Radiation Center in Madison, Wisconsin. At SUNY Cortland I worked on electromigration in thin films in work supported by the Rome Laboratory. Electromigration is by far the largest cause of hardware failures in microelectronics. I examined relationships between the size and shape of electromigration voids, as well as their location in thin film conductors. I have also worked with NASA on the X-38, the International Space Station's crew return vehicle. This work involved computer modeling of defects (both delaminations and microcracking) in composite laminates, and their effect on the structural properties of the laminate. The composite laminates qere used in the vehicle's aeroshell. I have recently been working on characterizing extended vacuum systems operating with variable speed vacuum control, and looking at the electronic noise fed back onto the power grid by variable speed pumps.
Here at SUNY Cortland I taught a variety of courses, including calculus-based introductory physics, solid state physics, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics, and C programming. I was a member of the college Assessment Committee, chaired the General Education Committee, and was co-chair of the Commencement Committee.
When I was not in front of a computer (mostly C++) or in front of a class (mostly physics) I enjoyed reading (mostly sci-fi), cooking (mostly chocolate), walking my dogs (mostly Newfoundland), taking flying lessons (mostly Cessnas), and singing (mostly behind closed doors).
I was the faculty sponsor of the Physics Department Physics and Engineering Club for many years.
Yolanda J. Kime
Office: Bowers Hall 133
Phone: 607-753-2919
E-mail: kimey@snycorva.cortland.edu