Oswego Alumni Magazine » technology education

Alumnus Used Tech Ed to Build Multiple Careers

Shane M. Liebler — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:25:53 +0000

If you live in New York City, Raymond Dennis Harquail ’71 might have something to do with where you live.

Raymond is the founding chief of the city’s Building Inspector and Plan Examiner Training Academy, which has more than 300 inspectors studying 17 different categories at any given time.

Raymond Dennis Harquail ’71 is the founding chief of the city’s Building Inspector and Plan Examiner Training Academy.

It’s the most recent of a number of careers Raymond has taken on, going all the way back to his days as a student and young shop teacher when he would do electrical, carpentry and plumbing work in the summers.

“I started with my hands and I’m still working with my hands,” says Raymond, who took a lot of cues from his grandfather, one of the first union plumbers in New York City.

The training academy is designed to keep building inspectors current and knowledgeable. His role developing the curriculum is actually his encore as a city government employee.

From 1987 to 2003, Raymond was training director for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where he oversaw development of some of the first bus simulators in the country.

“From my 20s to my mid-60s there was always room to learn,” says Raymond, whose careers have been notably varied.

After graduating with a master’s in instructional technology from Indiana University, he headed to the SUNY College of Optometry, where he put together a learning resource center serving doctors, medical students and more than 100,000 clinic patients a year. Earlier in his career he worked as an engineer for EBASCO, travelling the world to train more than 20,000 nuclear power plant managers, supervisors and construction trade workers. He went to the Rochester Institute of Technology to become a biomedical photographer performing diagnostic imagery of patients prior to eye surgery.

The common ground? His instructional designs follow principles he learned at Oswego, Raymond says.

“I couldn’t do it without Oswego.”

Video: Torchlight Ceremony speaker Yvonne Spicer ’84 M ’85

Shane M. Liebler — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:42:56 +0000

The Oswego Alumni Association welcomed Yvonne Spicer ’84, M ’85 as this year’s mistress of ceremonies at the Commencement Eve Dinner and Torchlight Ceremony May 11.

“You are deeply immersed in the digital native generation,” she told 700 students, faculty, staff and family gathered for Commencement Eve Dinner. “Many of the jobs you will have, have not been invented yet.”

Spicer is vice president of advocacy and educational partnerships for the National Center for Technological Literacy based at the Museum of Science, Boston.

Lewis, Belt earn top SUNY-wide awards for teaching

Jeff Rea — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:42:54 +0000

SUNY has bestowed a 2012 Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching on two professors whose work has been transformative for decades of Oswego students: Tracy K. Lewis and John H. Belt.

Lewis, a multilingual teacher-scholar for nearly three decades and a pre-eminent expert on the literature of Paraguay, has taught Spanish, Portuguese, Spanish literature and more with patience, humor and creativity.

Belt, a teacher of technology design for 37 years at Oswego, has earned lifelong admiration among students in many fields for his groundbreaking and rigorous teaching methods in pursuit of making the world a more livable, sustainable place.

Tracy K. Lewis, Professor of Modern Languages and Literature

: John Belt, Associate Professor of Technology

Faculty Hall of Fame: Charles Phallen

Michele Reed — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:41:22 +0000

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.

Last year, France honored him with the Chevalier Legion of Honor. The Legion of Honor is the highest award France can bestow, and it was presented to Phallen for his “personal, precious contribution to the United States’ decisive role in the liberation of our country.”

Phallen was a senior at Otterbein College in Ohio when he was called up to military service in 1941, and had to leave without graduating. After training at Fort Knox, he went on to serve as commander of the 3rd Infantry Tank Destroyer Unit. “The only thing worse was carrying a rifle,” he says. Phallen would take part in five D-Days, and in four of them, was among the first wave in.

He began his war experience in North Africa, where temperatures could reach 120 degrees. “The Germans beat us up,” he says of the inexperienced Army of that campaign. From there he and his unit went to Anzio Beach, where Phallen was seriously wounded. As he lay on the beach waiting to be taken to the hospital ship, it was destroyed by German artillery. He would recuperate for four months at Naples before rejoining his outfit at Rome, just as the Germans were leaving. The Americans’ casualty count of 26,000 in that campaign was the highest toll of any division in the war.

His service would lead him through the Alps and France, over the Rhine and into the heart of Germany.

Phallen’s military career included the life-affirming, like delivering a baby for an Italian housewife, to the horrific, discovering Dachau concentration camp while searching for housing for his men.

After the war Phallen would finish his bachelor’s degree and earn a doctorate at Ohio State University. His adviser suggested he apply to Oswego, for some “good experience.” President Foster Brown hired him at the rank of associate professor, leading to a 25-year career in the technology education department, teaching mostly graduate courses.

Today, in his cozy home a block from the campus where he taught from 1958 to 1983, Phallen is surrounded by memorabilia of his war years: scrapbooks and photos of the battlefields and cemeteries, a tiny replica of his tank destroyer, and medals. He travels to Italy, France and Germany, where he has placed liberation plaques at battle sites and participated on panels with military historians. Last year the mayors of Augsburg, Munich and Salzburg hosted the veterans for lunch.

Wanderlust is nothing new to Phallen, who after retiring became a “caravaner,” traveling the world in his Airstream. He would roll through 27 countries in Europe, and visit South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and China.

Closer to home, he loves spending time with his family, which includes daughter Annaliese Phallen Kieskowski M ’75 and her husband, Joseph; son Iver ’70 and daughter-in-law Phyllis Lamonica Phallen ’70. Sometimes former students visit and his first great-grandchild was born this summer.

“It’s been a good retirement,” he says with a smile.