Robert Brummond Department: Sciences-Physics Years at Concordia: 1956-1990 Current Home: Fargo, ND Email: bobjoyce50@aol.com
Robert Brummond spent eight years teaching science and mathematics in Minnesota and Iowa high schools and at Emmetsburg, Iowa, Community College. He earned an M.A. degree in science education and physics at the University of Minnesota in 1955. He came up from Iowa for an interview at Concordia in April, 1956, during a snowstorm. Driving up Highway 75, by the time he reached Moorhead there were seven or eight inches of snow on the ground. He was on leave one year during the time our class was at Concordia, spending the 1964-1965 academic year in a National Science Foundation program for chemistry and physics teachers at the University of Texas. As a result of his studies in that program, he started courses in astronomy and meteorology at Concordia. A small observatory was built, with the help of students, on top of the science building which had opened soon after our class graduated. That observatory operated for three to four years. Subsequent to that, viewing facilities were built in a small building on the south side of the athletic field that allowed several telescopes to be used at the same time. Brummond has been a member of the Fargo-Moorhead Astronomy Club since the mid 70s and the International Dark Sky Association. He remembers many serious-minded science majors from our time who went on to go into teaching. Concordia turned out more science teachers at that time than in recent years. He would like to see more current science students going into teaching. He recalls that during our time, after chapel many faculty members gathered for coffee in an area near the cafeteria in the basement of Academy. Sonny Gulsvig often told what Brummond called “Norwegian stories,” humorous stories of the Ole and Lena type. Faculty who hadn’t been at coffee would often ask later what Gulsvig told there. Brummond has fond memories of many of his students who went on to teaching and graduate school, and has been delighted when some came by from time to time to visit him. Brummond retired in 1990. He spent his final semester teaching at a college in Hamar, Norway, through an exchange program between Concordia and the college at Hamar that Verlyn Anderson had developed. It was a rewarding way to spend his last semester teaching, and he still is in touch with some of the people he met in Hamar. A concern he has is for Concordia and other liberal arts colleges to find ways of associating their courses with the “real world” and including in the curriculum some courses of study that may position students for employment opportunities after graduation. Based on an interview conducted by Mark Chekola on February 6, 2017
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