Two days away from graduation, a doctoral student approaches the
door with a four-year-old in hand, and searches for the right words. She
wants to tell Roy Wilcox he made a difference in her life.
Maybe the boy understands. His eyes shine in the unfamiliar office.
She phrases her thanks three different ways,
because Dr. Wilcox is insisting it's nothing, really nothing,
he's done. The credit is yours, he says. Take what you have
and be your best. She stands in the doorway for
another thirty seconds. What to say to this gruff professor?
"Really, thanks again . . . for all you've done."
And she begins to leave, her destination a small
high-tech company in California, Wilcox says.
"Keep in touch," he reminds her. "Just send us
twenty percent of your salary off the top,"
he adds with a laugh.
Roy Wilcox has gone through this with thousands
of students in his career in materials engineering at
Auburn. Now he's ready to go.
"I have a student in class next quarter whose father I advised as a master's candidate," he reflects. "When you
begin teaching their kids, it's time to retire."
It's something Roy will do at the end of the year, after some 37 years of
teaching, first at Virginia Tech, and the past 27 at Auburn.
He's seen a lot of changes.
"When I came here, all Auburn had was two shopping centers, and they
were both small Midway and Glendean. The explosive growth that this town
has undergone still amazes me," he says.
"The school was also a lot smaller, I think ten or twelve thousand
compared to twenty-two today . . . Haley had just been built, and the construction of
Broun for EE was years away. To me, Broun was the military science building
next to Ramsay."
So it was for a lot of students who passed through as Dr. Wilcox reared
a family and watched town and campus grow up around him. His children, a boy and a girl, are now adults.
Have the students changed much, he is asked.
"You know, they don't seem as well prepared today
as they used to be, or want to put out the same amount
of effort," he reflects. "They seem to want their due."
It's a surprising comment given his reputation of going to
bat for his students, but one that has been echoed
by other faculty as well.
"Roy has always been seriously
student-centered, then and now," a colleague observes. "I
have to agree that many of the students that came in
earlier decades as veterans were older and more
aggressive in their studies. On the other hand, students are
taking heavier loads now, and the demands of changing
technology have mushroomed on them."
So too have the demands on the professors,
Wilcox would argue.
"In a sense, I don't envy young faculty coming into the profession
today," he says. "It's a good career, but it's
also hard given the demands of teaching and research."
He cites in particular the time spent by faculty in securing research funding.
"It's a catch-22 situation where you have a conflict in the time that you can prepare for teaching and the time
you spend chasing after the dollars." he
points out.
"Research is necessary not only because part
of your livelihood depends on the 'soft funding' it brings in to
make up for chronic shortages in teaching salaries, but because it's the only way
to stay current in the field."
While he reflects that teaching seemed like more fun earlier on
(and hey, it probably was), he takes a senior professor's burden of
administrative duties seriously.
"When new students come to me I map out their schedules through
graduation, and if they stick to it, they'll graduate on time instead of spending an
extra year here. That's important to a lot of students. College is expensive."
He considers Auburn's primary mission as undergraduate education, and
his philosophy has always been 'to get it to the student in a manner they can understand.'
He's known to be tough on tests early in the quarter ("That's how you get
their attention and raise the quality of their academic experience . . .") and, he
says, doesn't like to hear students ask stupid questions.
"You know what a stupid question is, of course," he asks. "One that
the professor can't answer. A dumb question is one a student already knows
the answer to."
He has always taught materials, and is a metallurgist by training.
"There is a lot of emphasis on composites now, but it's a field that
serves as a complement rather than a replacement for metallurgy," he points
out. "We're doing research now on 'smart' or adaptive metals that can be used
in everything from eyeglass frames to bridge sensors that can telegraph
damage to a structure as it occurs, and prevent accidents."
Can he leave it all behind?
"I'm going to be the student
now," he says, detailing the plans he and his wife are making to attend a series
of Elderhostels across the country.
He plans to get to them with the 27-foot motorhome he bought in 1990
that has already seen a trip to Alaska.
"It's a lifestyle," he explains.
"We get to where we want to go as leisurely as we want, camping along the
way. The food's in the fridge and the shower's down the hall.
"We pulled into a rest stop in Kansas in the middle of a huge
thunderstorm and people were jumping from their
cars to the restroom as fast as they could in the pouring rain.
"I was fixing a ham sandwich and watching them out of the window.
You know, it was sort of funny."
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