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D. TRUMPIE PHOTOS
Saluting leaders in teaching, research on campus Editor’s note: The four Albion faculty members featured below retired from active teaching this spring. These profiles recognize the extraordinary contributions each has made in the classroom, in scholarship and in service to Albion College and the Greater Albion community. (Alumni who wish to contact these or any other retired faculty will find their addresses on p. 20.)
Robert Armstrong, chemistry by Annie Topie For professor Robert Armstrong, this year has been a time for completions. In April, with his grandchildren looking on, Armstrong completed his 17th gallon of blood donated to the American Red Cross in Albion, just in time to attend the Chemistry Department symposium given in his honor that same day. Armstrong spent much of the year overseeing the completion of the Albion College Habitat for Humanity’s first house. And last but not least, in May Armstrong completed his career teaching chemistry at Albion College. For the past 27 years, Armstrong has had the challenge not only of teaching, but keeping up with developments in biochemistry, which have expanded exponentially since his student days. “Eighty percent of what I know I have learned since I left graduate school,” Armstrong explains. “It’s mindboggling to keep up with the changes.” Armstrong has enjoyed a reputation as being a difficult teacher. His daughter and former student, Robin Armstrong Arntz, ’92, often used her mother’s maiden name while a student, and remembers her father was a frequent topic of complaint among her peers. However, says Arntz, “I’d seen students come back after going to medical school and say, ‘Thank you so much. In med school, I breezed through biochemistry when everybody else was failing.’ So I saw the appreciation down the road. . . .” “It has been rewarding to have former students come back and say biochemistry in medical school is easier than at Albion,” Armstrong agrees. “Because of that they’ve been more successful in other medical courses.” At some point in their four years on campus, Armstrong taught most of the students who were headed to health care careers, and he served throughout his tenure on the College’s Pre-Medical/Pre-Dental Advisory Committee. “Dr. Armstrong’s mentoring clearly influenced me to pursue a research career in human biology,” says Albion College trustee Jim Wilson,’77, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Human Gene Therapy. Wilson notes that Armstrong “brought biochemistry and molecular biology to undergraduate education when it was in its infancy, [and] this positioned Albion students to be competitive and have insight into the future of biomedical research.”
Armstrong also employed his teaching talents during his 20 years of service to the local ambulance service. Along with being an emergency medical technician (EMT), he has served as an unofficial on-the-job teacher for numerous Albion College student EMTs over the years. “When I started, I learned everything I did from people like him . . . he was very good under pressure, never got uptight, was able to take control of situations very quickly,” says Frank Broccolo, ’99, who Armstrong worked with Armstrong for four years, both in class and in the ambulance service. “I knew I didn’t want to do emergency medicine as a career, but Dr. Armstrong gave me really great experience in the field and was always encouraging me,” says Broccolo, who recently completed a master’s degree in biomedicine and plans to continue to medical school. “I think I may actually like to do emergency medicine now, as so much of my experience has been pre-hospital care.” After the ambulance service was restructured in 1999, Armstrong turned his service focus to the Albion College student chapter of Habitat for Humanity. The group had started its first house, but it became clear that the house would not be finished before school let out in May 2000, and none of the group members were available to work on it over the summer. “He has dedicated endless hours towards this house in the past year,” says Elizabeth Mettler, ’03, president of ACHH, explaining that Armstrong worked, often alone, all summer so that the family could move into its house in the fall. Armstrong’s efforts were recognized this past spring with the Bridge Award, given annually by the Office of Campus Programs and Organizations to the faculty member who has done the most to foster faculty/student relations. “His [work] goes beyond the teaching of building skills—he teaches life skills by the example he sets at the site,” Mettler adds. “As I look back, I couldn’t have thought of a better place to work for 27 years,” muses Armstrong, who spent his early career teaching at the University of Michigan. “The department here has been a very cohesive, friendly and cooperative group. It has been a great place to work.” Now he is eager to start his retirement plans, which don’t include “taking it easy.” “I’m looking forward to getting another Habitat house up and tackling more of my own projects,” he explained. “I definitely think I will miss teaching, but it is time to move on.” In recognition of Bob Armstrong’s career at Albion, the Chemistry Department sponsored lectures in March by two of his former students. Laura Fleck, ’81, director of the Conservative Spine Care Program at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, spoke on
“Progress in Pain Management: A Historical Perspective.” Brian Vande Berg, ’90, a researcher with the National Institutes of Health in Durham, N.C., reflected on his current explorations in his presentation Baumgartner on “DNA Polymerase Beta: How Does It Work?”
Ingeborg Baumgartner, foreign languages By Jake Weber Right up until she retired from Albion this spring, foreign languages professor Ingeborg Baumgartner was refining her course outlines and experimenting with new teaching techniques. Whether it was exploring the subtleties of expression in the classics of German literature or pursuing the fine points of grammar in Russian, she viewed each course as an opportunity to engage her students in subjects she loves and to open a window on other cultures. “I teach advanced German now, and I never could have done that without Inge,” says Barbara Weidendorf, ’83. Weidendorf, who currently teaches German and economics in West Bloomfield, notes that Baumgartner has continued to mentor her in the nearly 20 years since her graduation. “When I return to Albion [every year] for Homecoming . . . she has always shared what is new in her classroom. . . . Despite the fact that Homecoming occurs in October, she always has had preliminary plans for the summer to share with me.” “She was always seeking to improve her instruction and find new ways to connect with students,” continues Weidendorf. “I see this example as a challenge to me—to keep what works and modify or discard what doesn’t.” At a college where individualized attention for students is emphasized, Baumgartner believes foreign language instruction brings an extra intensity to the faculty-student relationship. In the case of Albion’s twoperson German faculty, that relationship begins with the introductory classes and grows as students progress through the major.
Knowing all her students from their first days on campus, says Baumgartner, gave her the opportunity—as well as the responsibility—to tailor classes, semester by semester, for the students who would be taking them. “Language teaching is difficult because the hierarchy [between professor and student] is very clear. It is difficult for language teachers to make students feel comfortable. . . . You feel your way to find out what they are interested in and go from there.” While her teaching has always come first, Baumgartner also has been actively involved in research on modern German writers. Novelist Thomas Mann has been a primary focus of her work over the past two decades. Baumgartner explains that Mann, a Nobel laureate, made voluminous notes while writing his complex novels. Those notes provide a fascinating sub-text to Mann’s writing, she says, and reveal how his views on life and living evolved over time. Baumgartner’s work in analyzing Mann’s writing led to her being named the College’s first Howard L. MacGregor, Jr., Professor of the Humanities in 1995. The professorship enabled her to spend several months at the Mann archives in Zurich, Switzerland, and to purchase research materials. “Copies of Mann’s diaries alone are expensive,” she notes. “But I was able to do so much having them here.” As a result of her intimate knowledge of Berlin and her abiding interest in the history of the Habsburgs and the intricate relationship between Austria and Bohemia, Baumgartner began developing one of the College’s earliest First-Year Seminars, a comparative study of Berlin, Vienna and Prague. “That course . . . gave me a chance to explore disciplines that are related to foreign languages and foreign places,” she explains. It examined the three cities’ political and social history along with their rich traditions in art, architecture, music and film. It was also the first seminar to incorporate international travel; with College