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Zhang: So, what’s your view of the college from being a student and then later a faculty member? What is your opinion?
Griffin: Well
I, as I said, I think that overall the student body is just
tremendously
stronger than it was when I came here as a student. We had really good students back then,
don’t get me wrong, and we still do have very good students, but
we
had many more of those who aren’t here anymore.
We still have some students who have talent and when they
come here
they’re going to do as little as they have to to get through,
and I
wish we didn’t have those students. If it was up to me,
they
wouldn’t be here to be quite frank with you.
I don’t have much use for that.
But, in a private school with high tuition like Rollins,
you’re going to have
that. So,
I mean, if I had to change something it would be that those
students
would be encouraged to find another place.
But there aren’t nearly as many as there used to be, and
I’ve
seen a gradual improvement in that every year.
And so most of the students I deal with I just think the
world
of. They’re great. I
wish we could do more to improve their life outside the
classroom. That’s been my frustration since
I’ve been here.
The biggest complaint we hear from students who leave
this place
is that their social life, that is their life outside the
classroom,
isn’t what it should be. And
if you want to have a wonderful place for students to experience
over four years, it’s
got to be just more than what happens
in the classroom and in the academic buildings.
It’s got to be what happens in the dormitories.
And I still think we have a long way to go there.
I don’t think we have developed enough policies that
respect those students who are trying to do the right thing.
And we often take the easy way out, make judgments that
allow
students who are doing the right thing to suffer and those who
are doing the
wrong thing not to suffer. I’ve been
very outspoken about that over the years and I will
continue to be outspoken because I care about good students and I
want
them to have the kind of experience they should have.
Zhang: What is your view of the faculty structure over the years?
Griffin:
There
is a change, and all of it isn’t good.
We have a much stronger faculty than we used to have
overall.
There’s no doubt about that.
Some
really good people. As
I said when I served on that Cornell committee, I was just so
impressed
with what our faculty is doing. What
I don’t like, that I used to love here, is that we have become
very
focused on our own departments and our own areas.
And when I was a student here, that
wasn’t true. And when I
came back as a faculty member, I spent as much time with people
in
philosophy and art and history as I did with people in the
sciences.
In fact, probably on a social basis more time.
And that’s what I really loved; that I could sit and
argue with
a philosopher or historian— Someone outside of my
discipline, and I spent as much time doing that as I did with
those in
the sciences. We are much more focused, because
people who are coming from
academic institutions today are more focused on their own
disciplines
and they tend to stay within their disciplines more than we did.
And that, to me, is a weakness.
I wish we could find ways to break those barriers again.
Within my own division, the science division, we met on a
regular
basis with people in all the departments and talked about
issues, and we
don’t do that much. So
that part is a negative. But
in terms of the quality of the faculty, there’s no comparison. It’s just really quite, quite good. In terms of the students that I see, there are
also big changes
there. So as I look back at what’s happened with the College over the years, most of it has been really good. I wish [we could regain some of the informal ways in which students and faculty used to meet.] Jack [Lane] will talk about that a lot. About the fact that we used to sit around and have coffee together all the time, and we’d go over to the old mail room, which is now the bookstore, and chat and see students, and it was very informal, but it was great. And that doesn’t happen as much as it should anymore. So that’s a missing component. And Rita tried like crazy to solve that problem. She put in a faculty dining room and did all kinds of things, and none of them seemed to work. I don’t know if you could change that. I’m not sure. It’d be nice to do it.
Zhang: What other courses have you taught over the years? You mentioned quite a few. Very interesting.
Griffin:
I’ve always taught a lot of non-major classes.
I find that much more a pedagogical challenge than
teaching a
group of majors who already have interest.
The students come into those classes often hating you for
being
there.
Here they are taking— She’s smiling (referring to Lily;
laughter); she knows.
They’re in there not because they want to be in there but
because they have to do this to get their general education
satisfied.
They remember the experience they had in high school
where they
were told that science is a bunch of facts that you memorize and
regurgitate to a teacher.
And my job is to change that.
And I take that on as a pedagogical challenge.
Now sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but I
try to
teach physics for those people as a human experience and it’s a
creative human experience.
It’s like any other field is.
And it’s not a bunch of facts.
The fact is, that’s the last thing science is.
It’s a process.
And so I really focus on that and try my best.
Some
students buy into that and
it changes their attitudes toward
what scientists are and what they do and others don’t.
And some students I hear from over the years about that
experience and some students probably still hated it.
(Laughs) But I try my best.
So I always enjoy teaching the freshman non-majors
courses and
I’ve done a lot of that over the years.
For years, I taught a course on energy because we were in
the
early seventies in the middle of an energy crisis and everybody
was
wondering where the next barrel of oil was coming from.
And so I taught a course in energy, which really allowed
me to
teach all kinds of physics and relate it to what they were
experiencing out there, and so that, I enjoyed that a lot.
Griffin Discuses Doing Research at Los Alamos Laboratories
Griffin: So,
Ken Andrew, who was my major professor, sent me to Los Alamos to
spend
some time with Bob. He
and I worked very well together and he became my major professor
at Los
Alamos. So all my research, my theoretical research, was
done at Los Alamos in New Mexico. It
had nothing to do with the fancier bombs or weapons or anything
else.
It was pure basic research in atomic physics.
But Bob was, as I said, internationally known. He wrote probably one of the best books in atomic
physics,
ever, or
close to
it. And when he was working
on his book I was there with him and he used to make me check
all the
math in all his chapters (laughs).
He was a taskmaster, boy! And
writing was his thing. I
mean, if you screwed up in your writing he was on your
case. So I
learned to write from Bob Cowan. If I’d write
something down that, when we were working on papers together, he
thought was
not well organized or well written, he would get all over my
case and I
quickly learned. I thought
I was a reasonably good writer when I went out there, but when I
came
back I was a lot better. So
I had a wonderful experience. I sat
in an office
where Nobel
Prize winners visited regularly. The
seminars were by the most famous physicists in the world.
I remember sitting in my office one day and Hans Bethe
[walked
by], who is a
Nobel Prize winning physicist and was involved with the
Manhattan
Project and was just a wonderful man. After the war, he
fought
against all the build up of nuclear arms and was just a
wonderful man. He came down the hall and I was sitting
there in my
office and saw him walk by and thought, Oh my God!
So I came out in the hallway to see where he went.
He went down to Bob Cowan’s office.
Bob is one of these people that did all this [work] with
computers, and he had computer outputs piled up to the
ceiling and there was this little space where he’d work.
And Hans saw all this stuff in his office and he said,
“Holy
cow!” I remember he just
said it like that: “Holy cow!” (Laughs)
In his German accent.
And he said, “Is there any way I can persuade the guards
to let
me bring a camera in here and take a picture of this; I’ve never
seen
anything like it in my life.” But
that was the kind of experience I had when I was a graduate
student; the people, and especially in the summer time when I was out
there a lot, the people who came to visit were gods of physics
and you just wanted to be close to
them and hear what they had to say.
Zhang: So over your thirty-five years of teaching career, can you recall some of your students that you will always remember?
Griffin:
I’ve
had some kids that I’ve [helped turn] around.
I won’t mention this [student’s] name, but [he was] one
of my
favorites ever, and one of my wife’s favorite as well.
We
have students to our home quite a bit, so she gets to meet all
of them too. I had this one
kid (laughs) who was the biggest goof-off I think I’ve ever had
as a
physics major. And he used
to be late for everything. So
talented, and yet he
would be late for everything and he’d miss assignments, and I
was
always on his case. So
one day I was in my office and he— I give oral exams sometimes
and
students dread them because I can be pretty tough on them; I put
them at
the board and make them sweat for a while, and then I’ll tell
them how
great they are (laughs). But
Chris came for his oral exam and he was scheduled for eleven
o’clock,
I’ll never forget this. And that was
back when I still had knees that I use to play
basketball three days a week with the faculty.
And it meant a lot to me getting out there and playing
basketball
for an hour. So
Chris shows up; he was supposed to show up at eleven o’clock.
And I sit there and no Chris. Eleven
thirty rolls around, no Chris. It’s five to
twelve, and Chris walks into my office.
He said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, Dr. Griffin.
My alarm didn’t go off.”
I said, “Chris, I’ve heard that excuse for” back then
probably “twenty years and it has no effect on me whatsoever.
I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.
I’ve got a basketball appointment and I’m going to go
play
basketball. Usually I’m
gone about an hour and a half. You
sit here. While I’m gone and while I’m playing and having a
great time, I’ll think over whether I’m going to give you this
exam
or not.” And I left!
(Laughs) And he sat there for an hour and a half.
I got back and he’s still sitting there.
I said, “Well Chris, I’ve decided I’m going to give you a
break and I’m going to give you this exam.”
So we went down [to the classroom] and after the first
five minutes of
(laughs) when he was very nervous, he did fine.
And
I ended up sending him to work with the group that I worked with
at Oak
Ridge for years. He got his Ph.D. in
atomic physics, my field, with one of the
great guys, a guy named Tom Gallagher at Virginia.
He then went off and got his post-doct[oral] in a laboratory in
Aimé Cotton, France. So
that was one I was most proud of because the way he was going,
he
wasn’t going anywhere. And
I think just being supportive, but being tough, you know.
Those are the ones I remember. |
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