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St. Olaf honors retiring faculty

By Kari VanDerVeen
May 5, 2008

The five St. Olaf faculty members who plan to retire this year have served the college for a combined total of 167 years. They've coached championship athletes, led students on learning expeditions around the world, written books, organized international conferences, and helped bring innovative ideas and research tools to campus. Most importantly, they've touched the lives of thousands of Oles. As the time draws near to bid them farewell, the college honors its retiring faculty members.

Gary Wicks '65
When Gary Wicks '65 arrived as a student at St. Olaf, dancing had been allowed on campus for just two years, dorms were segregated by gender, and women had to wear skirts to class.

It was a vastly different atmosphere from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Wicks had spent his freshman year before transferring to St. Olaf to play basketball. Yet he quickly grew to love the close-knit campus community at St. Olaf, where he eventually returned to serve on the faculty after two decades of teaching secondary physical education.

An associate professor of exercise science, Wicks is also an assistant men's track and field coach and the director of compliance, which makes him responsible for ensuring that St. Olaf meets all NCAA regulations. He's also served as a department chair, acting athletic director and director of campus recreation. He's organized two international conferences on sports and religion held at St. Olaf, which drew participants from around the world.

As he celebrates his 20th year of service to St. Olaf, Wicks is preparing to retire. He jokes that he's looking forward to having the time to actually enjoy a leisurely breakfast. He also plans to spend more time in his woodshop and travel, with one trip to England already on the calendar. Yet he knows that he'll always remain connected to St. Olaf.

"Once you've been to St. Olaf, you're different," Wicks says. "It stays with you -- you're always part of St. Olaf, and it is always part of you."

Bill Thornton
Bill Thornton began testing the idea of retirement several years ago by reducing the number of times he stopped by the Hill to work during the summer and Christmas break. Although he's not quite ready for full retirement just yet, the longtime men's cross-country and track and field coach is taking the process another step further by retiring from coaching the two sports.

"The passion and enthusiasm for coaching still burns bright and hot, but my energy level to do the physical work of coaching cross country and track and field is simply not there," says Thornton, who won't retire from his position as an associate professor of physical education until next year.

Yet he still has a winning spirit, noting that he hopes his coaching career doesn't end until May 24 -- because that means St. Olaf will have had athletes qualify for the NCAA Championships. Thornton is completing his 38th year of coaching track and field and his 25th year of coaching cross-country. During his tenure he has coached more than 100 Midwest Conference and Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) Champions and nearly 30 All-Americans.

Thornton says the most rewarding part of being a coach has been watching students mature academically, socially, physically and emotionally. It's a gratifying experience to send them out into the world and watch them contribute positively to society, he says, especially when former students and athletes stop by to see him as alumni visiting campus.

"I have always maintained that I have possibly the best job in the world," he says.

Cliff Corzatt
One of the most rewarding experiences Professor of Mathematics Cliff Corzatt has had while teaching at St. Olaf actually occurred thousands of miles from campus.

For the past 10 years Corzatt has taught an Interim course in Budapest, Hungary, providing students with an opportunity to study in one of the most important centers of mathematics in the world. He has taught the sophomore-level course in theoretical mathematics with a cultural context, providing a unique learning experience for students.

"It's been an opportunity to work with students in a much closer environment," Corzatt says. "You get to understand just how nice these young men and women are that we teach."

As he prepares to retire from St. Olaf after 34 years of teaching at the college, Corzatt has plans to continue teaching a few weeks each year in Budapest. He also plans to spend more time in northern Minnesota, do some traveling and get in more kayaking.

Retirement will definitely offer a change of pace after more than three decades of teaching calculus, linear algebra and abstract algebra to thousands of Oles. Before coming to St. Olaf, Corzatt taught high school math in the suburbs of Chicago and also taught in Nigeria in West Africa while in the Peace Corps. He also taught at Millikin University and Northern Illinois University. While at St. Olaf, Corzatt has served as department chair and has received several federal grants for his work.

Eric Nelson
When Professor of English Eric Nelson began looking for a teaching position in 1968, his goal was to find a job at a strong liberal arts college where he could focus on working with undergraduate students and enjoy small-town life. What he found at St. Olaf fit the bill so well that he's spent his entire career at the college.

"For 40 years I've explored beautifully written books and exciting ideas with very bright young people -- what's not to like?" Nelson says with a smile.

He plans on retiring this year from a career that began with teaching modern British and American literature and expanded into opportunities such as teaching courses in the Great Conversation program and film studies. Nelson and his wife have led several of St. Olaf's Study Travel programs as well as the Term in Asia. He's studied several areas of pop culture and wrote a book titled Mall of America: Reflections of a Virtual Community. Having that wide range of experiences has been one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching at St. Olaf, Nelson says.

"When I came out of graduate school, I would have never imagined teaching something like detective fiction," he says.

Nelson's most recent interest is film studies. His son works in the film industry, and as they talked about collaborating on a project, Nelson took classes in screenwriting and started learning the technical side of filmmaking. He brought that knowledge to his classrooms at St. Olaf, where in the past several years he's taught students how to think critically about what they're watching in his film studies courses.

"It's exciting to do something new at the end of your career," Nelson says. His retirement plans include teaching at the Cannon Valley Elder Collegium and becoming more involved in the greater Northfield community.

Gary Spessard
In the 35 years he's taught at St. Olaf, Professor of Chemistry Gary Spessard has proven he has an eye for innovation.

In the early 1990s he saw a demonstration of a computer program that performed molecular calculations and knew he had to bring it to St. Olaf. He obtained grants that enabled the college to get several workstations and stay on the cutting edge of developments in how chemistry is practiced. A decade later, Spessard heard a lecture about "green chemistry" at a conference and saw the benefits of designing chemical processes with a minimal impact on the environment. He interested several of his colleagues in writing a grant that eventually brought $500,000 to the college to incorporate green chemistry into the science curriculum.

"I've always been curious about new things to see if they will really work and help," Spessard says.

The innovations he's brought to campus have also furthered Spessard's other professional goal: ensuring that students have the opportunity to perform research. Working to design green chemistry processes, for example, has introduced students to environmental issues in chemistry with hands-on examples of imaginative scientific thinking.

"I'm really going to miss the day-to-day interaction with students," says Spessard, who has taught organic chemistry on all levels at St. Olaf.

Spessard is currently on sabbatical leave while he finishes a chemistry textbook he's co-authoring with Professor of Chemistry Gary Miessler. He is already living in Arizona, where he bought a house eight years ago to move to when he retired. He's just 20 miles from Mexico and plans to spend plenty of time hiking, golfing and traveling.

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.