C A M P U S C U R R E N T Celebrating 40 years


Deep and Abiding Commitment John Molinder arrived at HMC in 1970 for what he was told was a two-year temporary position. He said he’s glad the College decided to keep him around. “I knew right away that this was a very special place when


Jean Platt greeted me by name in downtown Claremont a couple of weeks after I arrived,” said Molinder, chair of the engineering department from 1983 to 1993 and current James Howard Kindelberger Professor of Engineering. For over 20 years, he was a member of the technical staff, Telecommunications and Data Acquisition Engineering Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he has been involved with NASA’s Deep Space Network. He spent one year as a visiting professor at Caltech, one year as a principal engineer at Qualcomm, and nearly one year as a contractor at Boeing Satellite Systems. “Having the opportunity to know a number of the founding


First-Class Chemist Jerry Van Hecke ’61, Donald A. Strauss Professor Chemistry, is not just celebrating 40 years as an HMC faculty member. Next year, he will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Founding Class of HMC, of which he is a member. The former-student-turned- faculty-member—who chose his major by flipping a coin and went on to earn his B.S. with distinction—is a revered professor, prolific research scientist, and a tireless alumni volunteer who believes the HMC chemistry department is one of the best in the world. After earning an A.M. and Ph.D. at Princeton, Van Hecke


worked for Shell Development for four years. He has watched the student population change from his era, when the majority of students were children of “blue-collar” workers, to the present. “Current students have quite a different college expectation beyond simply earning a degree.” “From the point of view of a faculty member and a member


of the Founding Class, the biggest change is size of the student body and of the faculty,” says Van Hecke. “With the faculty size increasing from 40 or so in 1970 to now more than 80, life has become more formal. When the student body size was on the order of 400, I knew the name and face of every student. That is not true today.” The biggest change in the college world, and everywhere


else, says Van Hecke, has resulted from the introduction of the personal computer and other electronic devices like cell phones.


8 H a r v e y Mu d d C o l l e g e S UMME R 2 0 1 0


faculty, most of the original members of the engineering faculty, and key trustees, including Henry Mudd, has given me a special perspective,” he says. “Faculty colleagues and staff across the College have inspired me. Of course, interacting with so many students, alums and some of their children who became students and alums, has been and continues to be the highlight of my career. It has been rewarding so see so many of my former students become highly successful in a wide variety of fields and maybe to have provided a stepping stone here and there.”


John Molinder: “I knew right away that this was a very special place...”


F a c u l t y N e w s


But the computer- induced change was foreshadowed by the hand-held calculator, the impact of which is probably overlooked in this era of the computer. “What I would


have wanted to have as an HMC student that I did not was a hand-held calculator,” he says. “Students today have no appreciation of the calculational effort it took with a mechanical adding machine—even if you had access to one—to determine the slope and intercept of a linear regression line, even for five data points.” Another important change occurring today, says the recipient


Jerry Van Hecke: “The best improvements at HMC are yet to come...”


of HMC’s Henry T. Mudd Prize (2000) and Outstanding Alumni Award (2001), is the recognition of the importance of research and outstanding teaching. “The College’s support of both has much improved.” “The best improvements at HMC are yet to come and will


occur when we realize that we are a 50-year-old institution that needs to move toward its new challenges with the confidence of an established entity, not one struggling to find its place,” Van Hecke says.


KEVIN MAPP CAM SANDERS


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