My middle school years were very entertaining -- for me. Every waking moment I could muster, I read. I mean that quite literally: walking to the bus stop, on the bus, eating breakfast, walking to and from classes, during classes (after finishing my homework, of course!) -- I even managed to read in the shower! As you can imagine, I was quite a pleasant little laddie.
In high school, I finally started making some friends. In particular, I met my wife Sarah in high school. She wasn't my wife then, of course. She was a senior directing a play, and was kind enough to grant me (a sophomore) a part. (This was a play for first-time actors.) We spent ridiculous amounts of time together -- rehearsals, of course, but then after rehearsals we'd walk to a park to talk, or sit on the sidewalk and play chess. We came to be great friends, and ended up married.
I had a useful summer job all through high school. I loaded boxcars. This was extremely heavy manual labor: twelve hour days, boxcars over 20 degrees hotter than the air temperature (which was already quite high, thank you), and 50 pound bags of grass seed -- at least 2000 to a boxcar. Why was it useful? It taught me that I didn't want to be doing manual labor in 20 years, so I'd better get an education!
It was in high school that I also discovered a love and an aptitude for math. A very special teacher, Mr. Ron Propp, taught my algebra II (sophomore) class. He gave us some very difficult extra-credit problems that were not only fun, but very motivational. I also had him for a calculus course, and it was there that I really began to love math. He taught the course as I believe it should be taught -- much of it by instructor-led discovery. He was terrific, and I owe him a great debt.
High school was good for me in general -- I got to do many things I enjoyed. I founded a chess club, was in several plays, sang in the choir, and was on the speech and debate teams. Our chess club took 13th in the state one year! (Well -- it was out of 16, to be honest).
I earned a fairly good scholarship to Linfield College, a small liberal arts school in McMinnville, Oregon, by way of the SAT/National Merit system. I chose Linfield because of its physics program. Linfield is the home of the Linfield Research Institute, an undergraduate research center. When I went there, they were primarily interested in thermionic emission properties of transition-metal carbides (e.g., hafnium carbide). It was a great experience for me, and I learned quite a bit of physics by getting my hands on the equipment. (For example, don't put your hands on the equipment that's electrified!)
I also worked with Dr. Don Schnitzler on a couple of projects. One of the more entertaining ones was a slide-show illustrating the relativity of simultaneity using the Simpsons. We made up sets of slides for two experiments: the first had Lisa Simpson riding on a train that was travelling near the speed of light. Bart, observing on the ground, saw lightning strike the ends of the train simultaneously. Lisa saw the strikes hit at different times. The second show had Homer lying on a beltway moving at near the speed of light, watched by Marge. In her reference frame, two choppers descended simultaneously, one just touching his head, and the other just touching his feet, so that he was unharmed (but barely). He appeared shorter to her than if he were at rest, however: had he been at rest, the choppers would have sliced him up. In his reference frame, he is much longer than the distance between the choppers. Since he is unharmed in any reference frame, the conclusion is that the choppers do not descend simultaneously in his reference frame.
We also spent a summer together in Los Alamos, supported by a grant from the Murdock Charitable Trust. We were working on a Monte-Carlo analysis of a certain decay process which was to be a by-product of the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) experiment. Our job was to predict whether this event would be detectable over background; I wrote my senior thesis on our analysis. That was a terrific experience.
As to math -- I took Calc II in the fall semester of my Freshman year, and fell in love with Taylor series. I particularly liked the relationships involving pi. Never let anyone tell you that there isn't room for beauty in math! Because of that class, I decided I needed to add a math minor. I don't recall when I made the decision to add it as a major, instead.
It was pretty tough doing a double major in math and physics, but I loved it. I had wonderful instructors all around -- Bill Mackie, Chuck Taylor, Clancy Hinrichs, Don Schnitzler, Jack Alin, Roger Dell... Most of the classes were very small -- I was the only student in my optics class! Clancy taught a quantum mechanics class that was fantastic, and Jack Alin introduced me to Modern Algebra.
That was when I decided that math was the life for me. I discovered that a great deal of what I had liked about physics was the mathematics! I started sending out applications to graduate school, and wound up at the University of Kentucky. Before I go into that, let me finish up my college career.
I minored in music (yes, my days and nights were full!), too. We had a superb music history class, team-taught by a husband and wife, the Neumanns. The period was from early Greek music up through music of the Renaissance. The Neumanns actually build authentic period instruments, and they performed the music on the instruments it was written for! (Ever hear of a racket? It's an instrument!) Amazing.
I had theory from Professor Van Dyk, and voice from Gwen Leonard. She really made me move forward vocally, and I wish I could have kept up the lessons.
Are you getting the impression that I liked Linfield? I loved it. It has to be one of the best schools in the country -- I never did have a bad teacher there, in any subject, and I had great teachers in most. Two I remember particularly (from outside my majors/minor) are Fred Fost (philosophy) and Joel Marrant (anthropology).
In the summer before my senior year, when I was in Los Alamos, my wife decided that she couldn't bear to rent any longer, and called me to ask if she could buy a house. WHAT?!? That's right, a house. She's extremely bright and capable, so I trusted her to make a decision on a house without me. She picked a wonderful fixer-upper.
We spent the next 11 months, while I was writing my senior thesis, fixing up this house. It was built in 1896, so we had our hands full, but it was a really charming house. We replaced the fuse box with a circuit-breaker box and rewired the entire house (so that everything was grounded), redid the bathroom and kitchen completely, refinished a hardwood floor, replaced a portion of the roof that was rotten, and various other littler projects I don't recall now. The only thing we didn't do ourselves was the formica on the countertop -- we hired someone, and I helped him. It was a great house, and we hated to leave it.
How did I get from Oregon to Kentucky? The director of graduate studies at UK paid my airfare so I could come visit. There were many schools I was interested in, but UK was the only one I could afford to check out! I really liked the atmosphere, I knew that I would get to teach a variety of classes, and I knew I would fit in comfortably. So I came! I never had cause to regret my choice, either -- on the contrary, the experience was wonderful. I taught 11 different classes while I was there, worked with some outstanding professors, and graduated in 1998 with a Ph.D. My advisor was Dr. David Leep, and he was terrific. He has a tremendous eye for detail and is a very finicky editor. I learned a lot about writing mathematics papers from him.
Sarah and I are also fixed up a house there. (That one we bought together.) We again redid the electrical work, refinished the floors of all but one room (which we left carpeted), replaced the whole roof, redid the kitchen completely and parts of the bathroom, and a host of other things as well. We sold that house in the fall of 1998, after I graduated.
I took a position in Nacogdoches, Texas at Stephen F. Austin State University. I enjoyed myself there very much; I was able to teach a variety of courses from the developmental level to the graduate level, and all levels in between. Sarah had her first novel, Lady-Lessons, published in the Summer of 2000; it was available (hardback only) from Amazon.com.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's available anymore -- the publisher has disappeared.
My friend and colleague Jill Dumesnil and I coauthored a College Algebra text and an intermediate algebra text. The College Algebra text (College Algebra: A Dream of Fields) builds up college algebra from the field axioms. I like it a lot. Dr. Galen E. Turner III and I worked together on some graph theory problems and published a couple of papers together. I am primarily an algebraist, but I have become very excited about learning about graph theory. In 2003, Sarah and I packed up and moved back to Salem, Oregon (adjacent to the historically significant town of Keizer -- see above), where I began an Assistant Professor position at Willamette University. I am very, very happy with my new position, but also very sad to have left some special friends in Texas. If anything interesting happens, you'll be the first to know. Almost.
8/6/03. It turns out that my last sentence was a lie. Here I am, 7 years later, finally updating my history, and you're about the last to know. Here are the most important parts:
March 31, 2006: My daughter Eliana Elizabeth Starr was born. Eliana means "answered prayer." She is beautiful and very, very smart. She is also creative and loves word play, which endears her even more to Sarah and me. February 2008: I got tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor!
July 9, 2008: My daughter Mikaela Renee Starr was born. She adores Ellie but has a very strong independent streak. "I wan' do it mySEF!" She is a real cutie.
Other than that, I've been doing lots of teaching math and doing research and generally having a great time. I love Willamette and its students, and I'm very excited about the new year starting up.
8/27/2010