Kenvyn Richards ’53

While teaching at Middleburgh, Richards decided to return to Oswego for his master’s. His thesis adviser, Professor Emeritus Charles Phallen, convinced him to earn a doctorate. When he finished his studies at the University of Maryland under the Defense Education Act, an opening at Oswego made it possible for Richards to return once again to the college he loved — this time as a faculty member.

His career at Oswego would span 15 years, from 1969 to 1984. He served as a student teacher supervisor and taught methods courses as well as those in woodworking and graduate studies.

Two sabbaticals changed his life. One, an opportunity to teach in public schools in Australia, would spur his lifelong love of travel, including visits to each state in the Union and every continent except Antarctica. The other sabbatical, to the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry to study wood science, fed his love of forestry. Today, the arboretum this Cornell master forest owner carefully tends on four acres in nearby New Haven, is home to 85 different species of trees. His two passions sometimes collide, such as when a chestnut oak acorn gathered on a scouting trip to the Gettysburg Battlefield became a tree in his yard.

Richards was an active faculty member, serving on the Public Ceremonies Committee and as a delegate to Faculty Assembly. He takes the most pride in his former students and their accomplishments, including Tom Simmonds ’84, M ’88, who is associate vice president of facilities at Oswego.

As an undergraduate, living in Splinter Village with his young family, Richards helped found the first cross-country team. After starting as a club sport, he circulated petitions to make it a team and can recall running up to then Student Council President Herb Van Schaack ’51 in the hallway of Sheldon Hall, to give him the paperwork. He would later coach cross-country at Middleburgh, and one of his outstanding runners later won the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship.

An active member of his community, Richards devoted two decades to adult scouting leadership and 10 years as a 4-H committee member. He volunteered for 27 years with the Dollars for Scholars program in nearby Mexico, N.Y., helping to raise more than $325,000 in scholarship money for local high school seniors. He served on the Mexico Board of Education for 14 years, including eight as president, before retiring from the board in 1994.

Always an outdoorsman, Richards is a proud member of the Adirondack Forty-Sixers, having climbed 46 peaks over 4,000 feet. He loves gardening and woodworking, but most of all he enjoys spending time with his wife of 62 years, Jane, and their children, Amy ’73, Douglas, Patricia, Audrey ’81 and David. The family Oswego tradition continues with one of Richards’ nine grandchildren, Scott ’05.

A loyal alumnus, Richards was honored by the Oswego Alumni Association with its Lifetime Award of Merit in 1994.

When he joined the Oswego faculty in 1971, the physics department was fighting for survival. It had few majors, and needed to attract non-majors to remain viable. With a bachelor’s degree from Drexel University and master’s and doctorate from Purdue, Brown was hired away from Kent State. His mission: to make physics understandable for those fulfilling general education requirements and elementary education majors looking for fun ways to incorporate science into their classrooms. Vowing not to “kill ’em with calculus,” he devised his own method of hands-on, play-based instruction.

Brown tells the story of how, on his first day on campus, then-chair John O’Dwyer brought him to his classroom — and it was completely empty. Brown took the challenge and soon filled the room to overflowing with games, art, toys and books to intrigue and entrance his students.

Even now, 10 years into retirement, he greets visitors with science jokes (“There’s a restaurant on the moon. It has great food … but no atmosphere.”), shows off student artwork made with scotch tape and Polaroid sheets, and beguiles them with simple wooden folk toys that illustrate principles like gravity and kinetic energy.

“I created my own view of education,” teaching introductory physics courses for non-majors, such as Physics for Elementary Education Majors, and Ideas and Concepts in Physics, Brown says.

To illustrate electric circuitry, he would have students practice troubleshooting. To measure the speed of a moving object, he would have them estimate the velocity of a cat running, a baby crawling, or a drop of water dripping down a wall. “That’s one way to have fun with metrics,” he says.

“For every topic, the students had to understand what it is, how it worked and have a demonstration for it.”

His most popular activity was the annual egg drop. Students would devise protective coverings for a raw egg and drop the package from the third floor of Snygg Hall. “The students were very creative and it was funny to see what they did,” says Brown, who over the years witnessed students dropping eggs in loaves of bread (“It worked, but if it breaks, you have French toast.”) and suspended from parachutes. The fun illustrates the principle of inertia and demonstrates how an airbag protects the occupants in a car crash. “The students’ work was eggs-cellent, eggs-traordinary, and an intell-egg-shell eggs-ercise,” quips Brown.

Brown’s creative approach to physics won him a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1974.

In retirement, Brown is immersed in the history of physics. He is fascinated by how the ancient Greeks invented abstract math not for practical uses but for the sheer fun of it, and intrepid souls kept the spirit of science alive during the so-called Dark Ages. And he reads voraciously, especially biographies of his three heroes: Galileo, Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, the favorite son of Brown’s hometown of Philadelphia.

A widower, with two sons and a daughter living in the Central New York area, Brown also loves to listen to music and play ragtime and classical pieces on the piano, indulge his reading passions of poetry and children’s literature, and correspond with teachers here and abroad about ways to bring more F-U-N into their own classrooms.

<

Hugh and Grace Mowatt Burritt established a scholarship for Oswego students.

The Hugh and Grace Mowatt Burritt Scholarship will go to a student who is a member of a music performance organization on campus or to a wellness management major, a health science minor or an athlete who participates in team, club or intramural sports.

“This is our legacy to the college,” they said. “We felt that it’s so hard for students nowadays.” They intend to increase the endowed fund each year, so that the awards for students can grow.

Grace Mowatt Burritt began her career at Oswego in 1963 and retired in 1993. She was first hired for all physical education and as the synchronized swimming club adviser.

In the 1970s when women’s sports became more prominent under Title IX, she took over as the women’s swimming and diving coach. “Then most of my teaching went into water activities: aerobics, lifeguarding and water training instructors,” she said.

Hugh Burritt began at Oswego in 1968 and retired in 1989. He was brought into the music department as a brass teacher and to start a jazz studies program.

He founded a jazz band which became known as Solid State and introduced new courses like “The History of Jazz and Rock,” while also teaching jazz band arranging and improvisation.

He chaired the department for six years from 1983 to 1989.

Both Burritts served on the Public Ceremonies Committee for many years, helping to plan and work at college events like the Honors Convocation and Commencement.

Hugh was responsible for bringing music into the graduation ceremonies, instituting the ceremonial trumpet fanfare, which opens and closes Torchlight and Commencement.

Grace hosted the yearly critique
in which committee members planned how to make the ceremonies better.

As emeriti, the Burritts are still active in the life of the campus community, attending concerts and sporting events, especially hockey games at the new Campus Center. They have a special bond with that program, since Hugh coached Ed Gosek ’83, M ’01 when the Oswego State men’s ice hockey head coach first laced on skates in Oswego Minor Hockey.

The Burritts keep in touch with many former students and expressed the hope that their scholarships will make life a little bit easier for future students especially in today’s difficult economy, and serve as a means of encouraging or recruiting students in their fields to attend Oswego.

Anzio Beach, Monte Cassino, Normandy: To most, these are names from a map or history book. To Charles Phallen, emeritus professor of technology education, they are places he served valiantly in World War II and visits now, at age 94, to receive honors from a grateful populace or pay  respects at the graves of fallen comrades.

As a teacher and mentor, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry Richard Shineman touched the lives of thousands of Oswego students. Since his passing in May of this year, he will impact generations more, thanks to his generous $100,000 bequest to the college.

“He had a very strong, committed, loyal feeling about Oswego — where it was going, what it was trying to do,” said his wife, Barbara Palmer Shineman ’65, professor emerita of education.

Professor Emeritus Dick Shineman

Dick Shineman was one of the founders of Oswego’s chemistry program and its first chair, as well as part of a cadre of professors who helped design the science facilities in Snygg Hall.

Thomas Weil ’66, one of the first class of chemistry majors, remembered Shineman as an important mentor to him. “He was a great teacher and along with Professor (Augustine) Silveira played a key role in my becoming a chemistry major and going into the field,” wrote Weil, who is a part-time chemistry professor after retiring from three decades in research and development at Amoco Chemical Corp.

Philanthropy was important to Shineman, who nonetheless insisted on anonymity during his lifetime. He would, however, acknowledge his support of the Freshman Chemistry Scholarship, with four awarded to incoming Oswego students each year. But his generosity to the college went far beyond that one program. In addition to his monetary gifts, Shineman gave of his time, serving on the Oswego College Foundation board of directors. He encouraged his brother, who was on the board of the Arkell Foundation, to consider Oswego students when it came time to award grants.

“The college was a very important part of his life,” said Barbara Shineman. “And along with it, he had this allegiance in the community to the church, the hospital and to the Rotary Club.”

With his generous bequest, Dick Shineman will share his love for the college with generations of students to come.

— Michele Reed