QUADRUPLE HUSKIES

For six profs, school pride is a matter of degrees BY KAREN FELDSCHER

They came, they saw-and they stayed. A handful of Northeasterners arrived on campus as freshmen, hung on to get their master's and doctoral degrees, and then wound up as professors. It's not done much, but these Huntington Avenue habitués saw something in N.U. that made them want to stick around. Northeastern obviously saw something in them, too. While the "Triple Eagle" (a triumvirate of degrees from Boston College High School, BC, and BC Law School) is celebrated, this group of Northeasterners went one step farther-they became "Quadruple Huskies."

Ralph Buonopane, E'61, E'63, PHD'67, laughs when he hears this term. "Well, I'm a department chair" in chemical engineering, he points out. "Shouldn't I be a Quintuple Husky?"

"So," he asks after a pause, "just how many of us are there?" Including Buonopane, six current profs fit the description. Four are in engineering, because Northeastern offered its first-ever doctorates in that area. Two others got doctorates in education after completing their undergraduate majors in other fields.

These days, in particular, it's unusual for people to stay on at an institution after their studies. The thought is that if you do all of your research or scholarly work at one place, you become ingrown. "After you finish your Ph.D., your institution usually sends you out into the big world-and if you turn out to be good, they try to get you back," says Bridget Puzon, editor of Liberal Education, the journal of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

The most notable exceptions are places like Harvard and MIT, which apparently figure they turn out such dynamite students that there's just no reason to look for faculty members anywhere else. "It does have to do with how well you respect your graduates," says Northeastern's Michael Silevitch, E'65, ME'66, PHD'71, an electrical engineering professor who directs the university's Electromagnetic Research Center. "But if you think the people you're turning out are top-notch, there shouldn't be a knee-jerk barrier to these people."

For one thing, longtimers like the Quadruple Huskies are likely to be highly loyal to their school. "I'm always carrying Northeastern's flag, and I like that," says Stephen Kane, LA'65, MS'68, AGS'74, EDD'81, a cooperative education professor who arrived at Northeastern in 1961. "I'm not having a mid-life crisis, thinking I should have done something else. I'm very fulfilled." Similarly, Silevitch says, "I've always felt that Northeastern was my home. The university instills within people a sense of community and belonging. That, to be honest, has kept me here."

Not that the four-time Huskies haven't ever been tempted to spend time elsewhere. Dana Brooks, E'86, ME'88, PHD'91, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, says he sometimes thinks about moving on-not because of anything bad about Northeastern, but because he'd probably have those thoughts wherever he worked. Silevitch agonized several years ago over whether to take a position with the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. He finally turned down the offer. "I wanted to be creating my own projects, rather than funding and helping others with theirs," he explains.

Buonopane did leave, taking a position as senior engineer at Polaroid in 1977 because of a crash in undergraduate enrollments at N.U. and because he thought faculty pay was too low. "The students who were getting bachelor's degrees were making more money than I was as an assistant professor, after ten years of working here," he recalls. "And, well, your family likes to eat." But he was back after two years. Although he'd sent a letter of resignation to his department, they hadn't accepted it, granting him a leave of absence instead. And while he was at Polaroid, his department chair called him-every week. Finally, when Northeastern offered him more money, he came back. "But I didn't do it only for the money," Buonopane says. "I did it for the academic life."

Not one of the Quadruple Huskies set out to spend his academic life at N.U. "I came as a biology major, thinking I wanted to be a dentist," recalls Kane. "Two things stopped me, though. One was my grades. The other was my manual dexterity. Even today they hide my tools from me at home." What Kane is good at is education, both learning and teaching. His long list of degrees includes two master's (one from Boston State College), a certificate of advanced graduate study, and a doctorate in education. When a job as co-op coordinator opened up at Northeastern, he grabbed it.

Associate co-op professor Robert Tillman, E'72, MEd'79, EDD'88, found N.U. "an absolutely perfect fit" from the start. "I am one of those people who thrived in the co-op program," he says. "And while I had no intention of coming back to the university [after working four years as a civil engineer], they asked me to apply for a new coordinator's job that was opening up in civil engineering. On a lark, I did it, and I never looked back."

Tillman did put up with some ribbing at first, though. People would smirk-in a friendly way-and say, "Couldn't leave the nest, eh?" One of his former civil engineering professors, Robert Meserve, teased him by pulling out his old grade book to see how well Tillman had done in class. "You can't leave your academic record behind," he laughs. "These people have a paper trail on you."

Making the change from student to professor was a breeze; the four-time Huskies had just been students themselves. "The students weren't much different from me," says Buonopane. "I felt comfortable with them." Adds Kane, "When I started here, my students were only two years younger than me." Fitting in with the faculty, though, was a little different. Like the time Kane bumped into the chemistry professor who'd flunked him. (Kane's explanation: "I was having a good time.")

Kane says he never felt subservient to any of his former professors, but admits that he was so in awe of certain people that it was hard to behave gracefully as a colleague. Although one of his former biology professors, Nathan Riser, told him to call him by his nickname, Pete, Kane just couldn't do it. "I still call him Dr. Riser," he says. "It's as far as I can go. It's a sign of respect." Tillman also found it strange to become a peer of his former teachers. "All of a sudden you're sitting in meetings with the faculty who taught you," he says. "It was like 'through the looking glass' a little bit. You looked around once in a while and thought, 'Is this really happening?' "

Buonopane, on the other hand, says he always felt comfortable around his former professors. "Working as a graduate teaching assistant helped make the transition smooth. I was 'known,' " he says. Moreover, Buonopane got a head start-literally talking his way into teaching his first class just after graduating with his bachelor's degree in 1961. He was already teaching a lab course for the summer, but wanted to do more. "I walked into Baker's office-Chester Baker was department chair for like forty years-and told him I'd like to teach a regular class to the sophomores," he recalls. "He said, 'You can't do that.' I asked, 'Why not?' He said, 'The university doesn't allow that.' I asked, 'Why not?' I kept talking to him and finally he said, 'Well, I'll have to think about it.' "

To seal the deal, Buonopane proposed a test of his teaching abilities: dividing a seventy-five-person class into thirds and letting him teach one of the sections, then comparing test results of the three sections at the end of the term. "The students in my third outperformed those in the other two," Buonopane chuckles. "That's how I started teaching."

While Buonopane's experience as a Quadruple Husky has been a good one, he says he'd advise students today not to follow in his tracks. "When I started, it was just beginning to be frowned on," he says. "But it's not the way to go these days. There's no real reason why it can't work or shouldn't work, yet it's one of those unwritten things that you don't do. The argument against it is that you should learn all these different things from different places. But that doesn't say you can't learn different things at the same place."

Silevitch wouldn't completely rule out a "quadruple" career for today's students, but warns, "you have to establish your own reputation, to distance yourself from the umbilical cord of your thesis adviser." That's something he himself had to accomplish. "I had to show why they should give me a tenured position," he says. "It was very important to do that in a way that I was not a clone of my thesis adviser." He's done that by taking sabbaticals and leaves of absence and conducting research abroad. "I've had a lot of external interactions that I've brought back to my research and teaching here," he says. He actually did study elsewhere for a time-at Brandeis, for his Ph.D. in applied physics-but found that he couldn't escape Northeastern. When his thesis adviser at Brandeis was let go, Silevitch suggested he go to work at Northeastern. Which he did-and Silevitch followed him back.

In Brooks's case, his adviser, Max Nikias, was preparing to leave N.U. just as Brooks was finishing up his thesis. So the standard concern that a homegrown researcher would always be "the adviser's student" was irrelevant. Brooks stayed at Northeastern in large part because faculty urged him to. He figured they liked his work, so there was no reason not to stay. "I got more interested in the field, so I kept reenlisting. I describe myself as a glutton for punishment," he adds.

Buonopane says he's had to prove himself to his colleagues in another way: to show that he's not too "in-house" to run his department effectively. "There are many people who believe you don't really understand what's going on because you're too much a part of the institution," explains Buonopane, who last year celebrated his fourth decade at N.U., having begun as a freshman in 1956. "But I'm a faculty member who does a lot with the chemical engineering community outside the university, and I know what the outside world is like. I know what's wrong with the university. But it's very difficult to prove to others that I've got a broader vision."

Perhaps the biggest transition for the Quadruple Huskies, however, wasn't becoming a teacher, but watching the age gap widen between themselves and their students-and watching those students change. When Kane was an undergraduate in the '60s, radical students wore long hair and love beads. Now it's rings in noses and eyelids and "God knows where else," he says. Buonopane admits to being completely at a loss when his students do something like showing up late to class. "In the old days," he says, "kids would never come late. With one group last year, though, coming late was 'the thing to do.' I talked to them about it, but they just came later."

Tillman sounds a tad wistful when he talks about his relationship with students. "Twenty years ago I was the new kid on the block," he says. "Now I'm the old dog. When you're closer to the students' age, they're more willing to listen to you. But down the road-when you think you're wiser and have more advice to give-they cast a more jaundiced eye on the advice you give. You can almost see the little balloon above their head, with the words, 'That's something my dad would say to me.' "

More than just the students have changed, Buonopane says. "Life was simpler in those days. The job opportunities were there. I don't remember an awful lot of people worrying about anything. Life at the university was also simpler. It was real simple for somebody to be hired. Was there even a posting for my job? I don't remember any posting. Was there any human resources management? There wasn't any human resources management. The chairman of the department talked to you. And if everyone agreed, the department chair called the president, and the president said, 'OK, hire him.' "

Buonopane et al. may soon be joined by another Quadruple Husky: newly minted Ph.D. Walter Fogg, AS'87, MA'89, PHD'96, now works as a research associate in economics. Although N.U.'s freshman-to-faculty fraternity is very small, several other people on campus have multiple degrees. Vahe Ghahraman, E'83, PHD'88, PHD'93, a lab director in civil and environmental engineering, earned three Northeastern degrees but skipped the master's. Balasubrama Maheswaran, MS'84, PHD'89, MS'93, a lecturer in physics, has two master's degrees and a Ph.D. but skipped the bachelor's. Administrator Harvey Vetstein, LA'61, MA'63, AGS'75, EDD'86, earned the full complement of degrees and is now director of communications and coordinator of educational services for University College. Vetstein and classmate Robert Vozzella, LA'61, MA'63, AGS'78, EDD'87, share the same suffixes. Vozzella is now the vice president for cooperative education. D. Joseph Griffin, UC'68, UC'69, MPA'83, is the director of public safety. Edward Sousa, UC'69, UC'70, MEd'72, is assistant director of computer support services in the Division of Academic Computing. Deanna Jantzen, LA'75, MPA'76, L'95, directs the Board of Trustees' office and serves as assistant university counsel.

Jantzen says she, too, sometimes gets teased about having earned three degrees at Northeastern. "People look at you as being one of two things: either blindly loyal to your alma mater, or appreciative of the quality of the programs the university has to offer," she says. "I'd put myself in the latter camp. I did not go to Northeastern for my degrees because I live, breathe, and die Huskies." Maybe so, but that initial N.U. degree sure did turn into a large litter.

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