Teaching Stars
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I was at UT in the College of Agriculture from 1947 to 1951. I didn't really have a [faculty] favorite as they were all great. One that gave me the chance of a lifetime experience was Professor Cole, meats judging team coach. As a girl had not traveled with the team prior to this time, he had to go to the dean of women to get permission for me to be on the team. I went to Baltimore and Chicago with the team my senior year.
—Polly Root Campbell
When given the choice of taking a year of astronomy or geology as a science for my journalism degree, I chose stars over rocks. Miss Mary Peters taught the astronomy class. On the first day, she had us raise our hand to show major. Then she discovered that the class was full of business majors instead of physics majors. I think she set out to make it interesting. We did models of the solar system complete with fluorescent paint and black light. She taught equations so that even a journalism major could understand it. We did research papers, and Werner Van Braun became one of my heroes as I discovered how to send a man to the moon. Later when the first Sputnik flew, I listened to the beeps and understood the difference between perigee and apogee. I almost changed my major to physics but knew I couldn’t handle the math. Now, any night I am outside and look up at the constellations and wonder at the expanding universe and the billions of galaxies, I think of Miss Mary Peters. I never made any money because of a year of astronomy, but my life has certainly been enriched.
—Lucinda Alsobrook Burbach
Here’s a shout out for the late Dr. Edward Dunn of the UT Broadcasting Dept. Thanks to Dr. Dunn, we learned that it was OK, even expected, to “learn by screw-up.” He was a worthy mentor, and he was the only person I knew, in the darkest days of the Watergate fiasco, who had an autographed photo of President Nixon on his office wall!
—Scott Shelton ’76
