1980: Bob McElroy, Jerry Pogatshnik
Robert D. McElroy, Jr.
9 Blue Meadow Rd
Middletown, CT 06457
Manager, Physics Dept.
Canberra Industries
Meriden, CT 06450
Phone: (203) 639-2212
FAX: (203) 235-1347
bmcelroy@canberra.com
History
SUNY Cortland, BS 1980
Cornell Univeristy, MS 1983
Cornell University, PhD 1986
Post Doctoral Fellow at Baylor University 1986 to 1988
EG&G/Energy Measurements 1988 to 1989
Senior Scientist for aerial radiation surveys and emergency response activities.
This was an example of a great job at lousy pay.
Westinghouse Savannah River Co. 1989 to 1994
Principal Scientist for NDA related activities about the site. This was an
example of a lousy job at mediocre pay.
Canberra Industries 1994 to present
I've been here in CT for about 6 years now and I'm getting antsy from being in one place so long. But the job is fun and the wife and kids like the area. Canberra turns out to be a great place to work and though I'ld class it as applied physics its still challenging. The bulk of the last 12 years have been spent designing and building non-destructive assay instrumentation for the various DOE sites and since I've come to Canberra, through out the rest of world. The job takes me from the Nevada Test Site to the glowing city of Tokai-mura in Japan. The three kids prefer to take me to the playground and the beach.
Jerry Pogatshnik
jpogats@siue.edu
webpage: www.siue.edu/~jpogats
History
SUNY Cortland, BS, 1980
University of Connecticut, MS 1981, Ph.D. 1986
Visiting Research Professor, Solid State Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
1986-1988
Assistant Professor, Southern Illinois University 1988
Associate Professor, Southern Illinois University 1992
Professor of Physics, Southern Illinois University 1999
In the fall of 1980 I started graduate school at the University of Connecticut. I
received my MS in Dec 81 and my PhD in 1986. My thesis advisor was Professor Doug Hamilton
and my research area was in laser spectroscopy of
solids. While at UConn, Lee and I became parents. Our daughter Sara was born in 1983 and
Adam in 1985. Today, Lee also teaches here at SIUE in the Psychology Department. Sara is
now a senior at Edwardsville High School.
She is actively involved at school (co-principal 2nd violin in the High School Orchestra,
Math team, Youth in Government). She has been accepted into the School of Engineering at
University of Illinois where she will attend next Fall. Adam is a sophomore at EHS. He is
active in the local Boy Scout Troop (currently a Life Scout).
After graduation, I worked in the Solid State Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as
a Visiting Research Professor. In 1988, I was hired as an Assistant Professor at Southern
Illinois University Edwardsville. I was promoted to Associate Professor in 1992 and to
Professor in 1999.
Typically, I teach our Concepts of Physics course, our University Physics course, and the
corresponding labs for those courses. I also regularly teach our Electronics and
Intermediate Physics Lab courses. (You may be interested to know that some of the labs
that you taught at Cortland I have adopted into our curriculum at SIUE). A few years ago,
I developed a course on the history of the atomic bomb along with colleagues in the
departments of sociology and foreign languages. It has become my favorite course to teach.
Some of the course materials are posted on my website at www.siue.edu/~jpogats.
In addition to teaching, I also serve the University in variour administrative capacities.
I was Acting Assistant Dean of the Graduate School and Director of the Office of Research
and Projects from 1993-1995. In 1996 I became the director of the University's
Excellence in Undergraduate Education Program (EUE). EUE is an internal grants program,
funded at $350,000 / year, that supports faculty and staff in developing innovative
programs for undergraduate education. In 1994, I became involved in the Illinois
Articulation Initiative, a state-wide effort to ease
transfer between community colleges and baccalaureate institutions. In 1999, I was elected
to serve as co-chair of the IAI Steering Panel. One of the things that attracted me
to SIUE was that it is similar in many respects to SUNY Cortland. I am convinced that the
path to my professional success began when I was an undergraduate there. As a faculty
member at SIUE, I've tried to follow the examples that you and Drs. Leaf, Chaturvedi, and
Bleecker, set when I was a student at Cortland.