From peter.kindlmann at yale.edu Sat Dec 31 02:22:47 2016 From: peter.kindlmann at yale.edu (Kindlmann, Peter) Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2016 07:22:47 +0000 Subject: [EAS] Goodbye from EAS-INFO Message-ID: Dear EAS-INFO Subscribers, Friends & Colleagues - You haven?t gotten anything from me on this list in two years, so some of you may have forgotten it ever existed. Thanks to the good folks at Yale ITS, list postings from 2000 to 2014 on are still at , some 770 of them, though I shudder to think how many stale links they contain. I started EAS-INFO in 1996 when I was fully active in teaching in Yale?s EE Department. A few years later I even spent 4.5 years as Director of Undergrad. Studies for the department. Those were all highly motivating circumstances for sharing with you what I hoped were interesting nuggets pertaining to education, information technology, and culture. Let me explain why my connection to Yale has now dwindled to occasional campus visits, and EAS-INFO has faded away with it. You always knew me to be a bit verbose, and I won?t disappoint you this one last time. The present is quite in contrast to the previous 50+ years, which saw me on campus most days, starting with my arrival as a grad. student in 1962, getting my Ph.D. in 1966. During 1965-66, while writing my thesis, I also started a Yale-wide facility for the design of research instrumentation, was allowed to hire a staff of 5 and spend $100K (in 1965 dollars) on equipment. The decade that followed was the rosy dawn of semiconductor technology - first linear and logic integrated circuit lines, first micro-controllers. My staff and I produced many published instrumentation designs for research in the physical, biological and medical sciences. Even then I already involved students in projects as part of the beginnings of my teaching. This experience set me firmly, and without regret, on a path different from ladder faculty. I wanted to teach engineering from the skilled practitioner?s perspective, the way it is done in professional schools, e.g. architecture. By the late 1970s, commercial instrumentation had evolved to amply fill the needs of research, so I took my quest for learning more about design into industry as a consultant. Work there ranged widely, from large control systems for the metal-casting industry, to analytical instruments like mass spectrometers, to small consumer products like fever thermometers, bathroom scales, and the Timex Indiglo(tm) backlighting for watches. And with the support of Yale colleagues with whom I also collaborated on research in those years, the Yale half of me became a perpetual Prof. (Adjunct) for the next 35 years, teaching circuit and instrumentation design from a deeply informed industrial perspective, always with emphasis on individual student projects. I won several teaching awards along the way, and collaborated and published on research in robotics, laser physics, computer engineering, biomedical engineering and medicine. Now I am fully in retirement, and so are almost all the colleagues with whom I collaborated and who understood my teaching, and the methodology and goals I had worked out. My last two years as Prof. (Adjunct) in EE were on a courtesy basis, i.e. without salary, and during that time I saw through my obligations to graduate students whose thesis committees I was still on. There too I was more involved than is typical, and this led to some publications. But in 2014 I was informed that my courtesy appointment would not be renewed. It was not mentioned what principle was being upheld. Why does that matter to my story about EAS-INFO? Retiring Adjuncts at Yale do not have the privileges that retired professors retain in their Emeritus years. So I can no longer access the Yale Library and its electronic publications, which I often used in past EAS-INFO mailings to broaden perspective, fill in details, etc. My offer of volunteer mentorship at the new Center for Engineering Innovation and Design did not produce any response. So, no contact with students, no access to the Library, no more EAS-INFO. (My apology to the few subscribers who signed up recently.) I had fun with the EAS-INFO years, and the often individual exchanges in the wake of a posting. Were it still going on, it should probably be a blog now instead of a list, but the point is moot. I continue to consult and do photography and have fun with that, especially since I challenge myself with the end result of a printed picture. Feel free to contact me, I would be happy to hear from you, but best use my new email addresses, either , or my core address . With all your endeavors I wish you my warmest best, in 2017 and beyond. ?Peter Kindlmann -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/eas-info/attachments/20161231/abcfb6a3/attachment.html