J'nan Morse Sellery
at Mudd since 1970
Louisa and Robert Miller Professor of Humanities

The course Quest for Commonwealth began the year J’nan Morse Sellery became assistant professor of English. Staffed with faculty from the technical departments, along with members from humanities and social sciences, the course—discontinued in the mid-’70s—was a sort of trial by fire for Sellery who recalls early morning lectures, bi-monthly student papers, and endless coordination with faculty colleagues. Despite the challenges, Sellery said it was “the best post-doc I could have had. The course taught me how to survive.”

Sellery became the first tenured female professor in 1980 and is credited with mentoring many female faculty and students. She was coordinator of The Claremont Colleges Intercollegiate Women’s Studies Program and was chair for one year of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. Jeffrey Groves, current chair and former grad student of Sellery’s, called her a leader in bringing out the inventiveness in students with her creative writing courses and with Media Studio, which she launched and taught for 29 years. She said it was difficult to bring Media Studio to Mudd because of the non-technical nature of the course, in which students developed a six-projector multi-image program. But it paid off, Sellery said, because it allowed students to think “off the page and around the corner.” The course, now entirely digital, is taught by Rachel Mayeri, assistant professor of media studies.

Since 2002, Sellery has been on sabbatical at the research affiliate Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University. There she will continue work on the “Gendered Voices”  of  Western Canadian writers Aritha van Herk and Robert Kroetsch.

Robert Wolf
at Mudd since 1963 
Professor of Physics, former Director of the Physics Clinic

Most would agree, Robert Wolf has done it all. Even he admits his very diverse interests have led him down interesting paths.

A mere 23 when he started at Mudd as assistant professor of physics, Wolf  became full professor in 1974. Not only did he teach the full panoply of physics courses, he is recognized as having taught “almost everything” at Mudd, including chemistry, mathematics, computer science, philosophy, engineering dynamics and public policy. One of his favorite courses was Science in Fiction for which he and students selected books with rich science themes and discussed their societal impact. He had a special interest in computer science, giving lectures before Mudd established the department or the major, and finding time to plan and direct the construction of a campus-wide optical-fiber computer network.

In addition to teaching, he held the physics department chair, was director of academic computing during the 1980s and, was founding director of the Physics Clinic program. Wolf said his sabbaticals have taken him many places, including Stanford, MIT and abroad, but the cooperation among faculty along with the student/faculty interaction that he’s experienced at HMC is without comparison. “This has been a dream school and a dream job,” he said. “The students’ enthusiasm, desire to learn and serious interest is what makes Harvey Mudd College a really fun place to teach.”

For Wolf and others at Mudd, the faculty/student connection remains even after graduation and retirement. George “Pinky” Nelson ’72 invited Wolf to teach again this summer at Western Washington University in SMATE (Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education), a program directed by Nelson that is a national model for improving teacher preparation. As he did last year, Wolf will teach physics to K–12 pre-service teachers. Wolf said he feels a responsibility to improve science education generally, especially in the local community. He intends to lend his expertise for such projects in between kayaking, biking, painting and ballroom dancing with wife, Gertrude.

Henry Krieger
at Mudd since 1968 
Professor of Mathematics, R. Stanton Avery Fellow in Mathematics

Henry Krieger is best known for juggling the two full-time jobs of coaching the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) men’s tennis team and teaching mathematics at Mudd, and excelling at both. Last year, Krieger—“The smartest tennis coach in the world,” according to A. J. Shaka ’80—was named to the CMS Athletic Hall of Fame for 27 years of outstanding leadership in the men’s tennis program. He coached the only CMS team to place first in the NCAA tennis championship (1981) and left with an SCIAC match record of 212–33, making him one of the winningest tennis coaches in CMS history.

Shaka, the first student he ever recruited for both Mudd and the men’s tennis team, went on to excel in tennis—an NCAA All- American and CMS Hall of Fame member—and at Mudd, becoming the college’s first Rhodes Scholar. “Where do you go from that?” said Krieger of his recruitment efforts, laughing. Kreiger said that coaching while teaching gave him an invaluable view of students. “I got to see what they were really like and understand what they were going through,” he said. “Those who found the right balance did the best at Mudd.”

He added, “Coaching gave me a perspective of what the place of athletics should really be in college.”

Kreiger, who specialized in probability theory and stochastic processes, served as chair of the faculty, director of the freshman division and chair of the Department of Mathematics. He is

credited with hiring half of the current mathematics faculty.

A busy retirement awaits Kreiger and his wife, Rita. As part of an elder hostel, they will travel to China, then later head to Israel where they will meet up with their son for the Maccabiah Games (for which Kreiger once coached the tennis team), then on to Greece in September. Kreiger said he will also be improving his tennis game so he can do well in the United States Tennis Association senior league. He said he has a year and a half to prepare for play in the 70-plus age bracket.

Thomas Helliwell
at Mudd since 1962
Former Burton Bettingen Professor of Physics, Interim Dean of Faculty

This is an exciting year for Thomas Helliwell. One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein had an incredibly productive year, publishing papers that addressed Brownian motion, light quanta (photons), and special relativity theory. Since special relativity is an area that Helliwell teaches, courses this year have taken on  special significance. So, even though he is retiring this summer after teaching physics at HMC for 43 years, he can’t resist celebrating the centenary of Einstein’s “miracle year” by lecturing one more time in fall 2005.

In addition to making special relativity part of the core curriculum at HMC, Helliwell chaired the Department of Physics for most of the ’80s. A prolific researcher, he published at least one paper per year on general relativity and cosmology. He has a reputation for being an entertaining lecturer, and is known especially for his references to rhinoceroses, interesting beasts primarily because they frequently travel at velocities up to 4/5 c and beyond. “I always try to lecture on something interesting.  It’s hard to get anyone else interested if you’re not.”

After Sheldon Wettack resigned as dean of faculty last year, Helliwell took on the job for one year while helping to search for a new dean. He is delighted to hand off the role to Daniel Goroff this summer. Helliwell said he looks forward to “doing something new the next 43 years.”