June 24, 2008

By Darla Martin Tucker

La Sierra University physics Professor Edwin A. Karlow is hitting the road after 30 years teaching students and aiding the former satellite campus’s transformation into its own scholarly identity.

At a recent constituency meeting Karlow stated that throughout his tenure La Sierra inspired him to strive for excellence.

The university, in turn, benefited from Karlow’s influence and pursuit of achievement. On June 15, during La Sierra’s graduation ceremony, university President Randal Wisbey presented Karlow with the Distinguished Teaching Award and the first Anees A. Haddad Faculty Award for Excellence in Advancing the Effectiveness of Faculty Governance. The awards cap Karlow’s La Sierra career that began in 1978 and ends this year.

“We’re going to miss Dr. Karlow very, very much on this campus. He and his wife, Marilyn, have given so much to all of us,” Wisbey said.

During the commencement processional and recessional, Karlow carried the university’s 33-pound, wood and caste bronze mace. He has borne the symbol for university ceremonies since its creation in 1999 by former art department faculty member and world-renowned sculptor Alan Collins. “It seems like every time I bring it in, people seem to be thrilled to see that mace,” he said prior to the start of graduation.

At the end of August, the Karlows are heading into a new life in Marilyn Karlow’s hometown of Walla Walla, Wa. The couple is also looking forward to freewheeling adventures around the United States in their recreational vehicle. “We bought a fifth-wheel and truck three years ago to practice for retirement,” Karlow said with a grin.

He will leave behind big shoes and deep impressions.
 
“When I think of Ed Karlow, I think of a master teacher, a sage faculty member, a balanced thinker, a loyal friend and the guru of process,” said La Sierra University Provost Warren Trenchard.

“He’s going to leave a big hole in this department,” said physics department Chair Ivan E. Rouse. Rouse and Karlow arrived on campus the same year. The two colleagues collaborated continuously in academic life and campus leadership and held a mutual interest in the great outdoors. “For many years we had tent trailers …and have been out [camping] many times. It was kind a hobby we shared,” Rouse said.

Karlow looks back on 30 years with his physics colleagues as the best years of his professional life.  He remembers sitting in a hotel room in Toronto in the early 1980s working with Rouse on a grant proposal for computer equipment.  They came up with the acronym CHAMP from “Computer Hardware for Measurements in Physics,” the title of the proposal.  The CHAMP project was funded and led to the first full-fledged computer-based science lab at the university. Merlan Scientific, a Canadian science equipment manufacturer, later licensed the CHAMP electronics and software technology and the university allowed Karlow and Rouse to forge royalty agreements with the company. CHAMP enjoyed over a decade of commercial sales in the United States and Europe.

Karlow has twice chaired the physics department and landed in Who's Who Among America's Teachers for teaching excellence. He chaired the faculty affairs committee for the faculty senate and was the first chair of the university’s rank and tenure committee. In 1991 he led the university in its preparation for accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. He served as La Sierra’s liaison with the Science Consortium of California Christian Universities, a think tank through which faculty at various universities share resources and concerns.

During the 2006-07 school year, Karlow agreed to chair the faculty senate, even though he as not a senator. No one else wanted the job, Rouse said with a laugh.

To engage all students in class discussions, Karlow installed Quizdom, a hi-tech system that allows students to push buttons on handheld devices and answer questions displayed on a PowerPoint slide. With the devices, the students send data over radio frequencies to a receiver. The answers are displayed on screen in a bar graph and the results discussed in class.

Karlow was also the first teacher in his department to use the online homework system, WebAssign. He was a “master” at creating physics demonstrations for his classes and incorporated spirituality by encouraging students to present Bible texts related to their physics topics, Rouse said. “As a teacher he has really been a leader in trying to do teaching as well as it can be done.”

“He really enjoys teaching. You can see that. He gets excited with the material and ends up laughing,” said Marte Asumen, a La Sierra student who graduated on June 15 with a Bachelor of Science in biophysics. Asumen took electronics and other classes from Karlow who also served as Asumen’s advisor.

 “I’ve always wanted to become a teacher,” Asumen said. “Whenever I look at ways to teach other people, I try to remember how Dr. Karlow teaches.  He’s like the pinnacle of a teacher. He’s not easy, he doesn’t give way to students … but he’s very kind hearted.”

While lecture methods have shifted dramatically over time from blackboards with white chalk to data projectors and computer-based graphics and animations, one thing hasn’t changed in Karlow’s view—students need to interact one-on-one with their teacher. Karlow cherishes the many memories of students “seeing the light” and catching on to difficult physics concepts.  “It’s moments like those teachers live for,” he said.

Karlow arrived at the La Sierra campus of Loma Linda University from Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Md. where he taught mostly mathematics. At La Sierra he joined a faculty of four physics professors in San Fernando Hall, one of La Sierra’s legacy structures built in 1932. Unlike other facilities on campus that have undergone various transformations, San Fernando Hall has always served the campus as a science building, Karlow said.

Joining a team of professors prompted Karlow, a self-described physics generalist, to find his academic niche. He focused on electronics, acoustics and advanced experimental physics. These interests led to the teaching of electronics and experimental physics courses and later of music technology courses for a new music technology degree that will graduate its first students in 2009.

The La Sierra experience overall compelled Karlow to strive for excellence, he told an audience of university constituency members in May. “The most significant thing is, it expected me to be my very best. It called me to be an excellent faculty member,” Karlow said. “La Sierra encourages people to raise themselves to the maximum potential they have.”

“In part it was just the ethos of the place, that La Sierra conceived of itself as being on the cutting edge of things,” he said in a later interview. “La Sierra has always had a sense of the avant-garde, a willingness to stretch to see things from a fresh perspective.”

After 30 years of teaching and intermittent involvement in La Sierra’s metamorphosis, Karlow believes the university now needs to invest in promotion and marketing and funding of departmental operations. Cuts to operational funds have “long-term consequences attracting and maintaining faculty,” he said.

Reflecting on transitions

Karlow has witnessed much change at La Sierra University, including its bumpy transformation in the summer of 1989 into an independent educational institution. Until that pivotal year, the campus had functioned for about 22 years as the La Sierra Campus of Loma Linda University. 

The small, newly separated campus strived with its identity and debate ensued over a new name. “We were temporarily calling ourselves ‘Loma Linda University Riverside.’  It was hard to see ourselves [as different],” Karlow said. “That was a troubled time for us, to deal with the reality of seeking a new, fresh definition.”  Campus leaders eventually arrived at a compromise by settling on La Sierra University, a name familiar to the broader Seventh-day Adventist church, but signaling the goal of becoming a true university acquired from the two-decade long experiment with Loma Linda University, Karlow said. 

In 1991, Karlow led La Sierra’s accreditation review and the university’s status was deferred until the middle of that decade.  Karlow remembers the words of a WASC director who stated in a letter to the university, “Since becoming an independent institution, you have turned the corner but have not yet made it down the block.”  “We’ve been inching our way down the block ever since,” Karlow said.

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges upheld the university’s accreditation in 1996. “We were re-affirmed, but held to high standards by our peers and this was good for us,” Karlow said. “Progress is not merely doing what we think we should be doing, but rising to the level our peers hold for us.”

During the 1990s, Karlow played a role in developing new rank and tenure policies and was the first chair of the university’s rank and tenure committee. It was part of an attempt to create a pool of faculty dedicated to scholarship, to achievement and excellence.  “I saw that as a signal change in the way the university does business,” Karlow said.

Throughout its growth, La Sierra¹s Honors Program has been one of the university’s key successes, Karlow said. He directed Honors for three years in the 1990s during which time he mentored five honors students.  He also commissioned its logo, designed by the sculptor Collins. “I look back on that with a bit of fondness as something I contributed to,” Karlow said.

During his tenure, Karlow has witnessed La Sierra “move from giving lip service to scholarship to treasuring it as part of the life of all faculty,” he said. The university has also become highly regarded in the local community, an achievement Karlow credits largely to La Sierra’s former President Larry Geraty.

“We still have a ways to go but I think we’re probably ahead of some that have taken on [the label] ‘university’,” Karlow said.

PR Contact: Larry Becker
Executive Director of University Relations
La Sierra University
Riverside, California
951.785.2460 (voice)