Richard Merrill Wheeler
Emeritus Professor and Chairman of Physics
SUNY College at Cortland
Cortland, New York 13045-0900

 

I came to SUNY Cortland in 1973 and retired in 2008 after 35 years in the classroom.  I was the chairman of the Physics Department for the last 13 years of my career.

I received my B.A.(1964, Phi Beta Kappa) and Ph.D.(1969, Sigma Xi) from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.   I spent two and a half years at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, and one year at Rice University in Houston, Texas, as a post-doctoral research fellow before coming to SUNY Cortland in 1973.  My research work derived from an interest in particle accelerators.  My work at Hopkins and Purdue was in nuclear physics and gamma-ray spectroscopy.  Later, at Rice and then Cortland, my work focused on applications of x-ray spectroscopy (ion-atom interactions) and trace element analysis of biological samples.  While at Cortland my research used the Cortland 400 keV VandeGraaff accelerator, the Oak Ridge Tandem VandeGraaff Accelerator Laboratory, the Brookhaven National Synchrotron Light Source, the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, and the North Texas State Accelerator Laboratory.

My teaching interests centered around electricity and magnetism, electronics, general physics, physics laboratory experiments, computer programming, and secondary science teacher education.  I like to write and all of the laboratory manuals used in the Department, as of my retirement, were written by me.  While I had no formal training in computers, I spent a fair amount of time around them for purposes of data analysis.  I learned to program when I was 19, working for the U.S. Weather Bureau in Washington D.C.  In those days, a room-sized mainframe computer had far less power and speed than what you have on your desk today and cost thousands of times more.  I was interested in teacher education from the beginning of my career.  In 1988 and 1989 Ram Chaturvedi and I held an NSF Summer Institute in Modern Physics for regional high school physics teachers whose primary specialty was not physics.  This NSF Enrichment Program was later cited by the Director of the National Science Foundation as an example of an innovative program in teacher training.  I am proud to say that over the span of my career the Physics Department at SUNY Cortland had a dozen students go on to earn the Ph.D. in various fields.  Finally, I was a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1986.

As the chairman of a department with declining enrollment I reluctantly oversaw a reduction in staff from five to three full-time members by the year 2000.  Subsequent increases in enrollment in recent years have seen the Physics Department grow to four full-time members.  I was actively involved in NCATE accreditation of our adolescent physics education programs, Middle States review of the college, state-wide recertification of our adolescent physics education programs, and state review of the Physics Department.  As a faculty member I founded the Computer Applications Minor and served as its Coordinator for several years, taking the program from two or three students to sixty.  I founded and then coordinated the Earth and Sky Freshmen Interest Group for several years.  Over the years I served on many of Cortland Faculty Senate standing committees including the Faculty Senate and the all-college General Education Committee.  In 1982 I was a member of the committee which implemented the current General Education Program at Cortland.  I am a former chairman of the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee and the Math/Science Personnel Committee.  A review of my career is given at wheelerretirement.pdf.  My Vita is given at wheelervita.pdf

My wife Amy and I lived in Cortland, New York for thirteen years, later in Ithaca for twenty four years, and now, as a retiree, in Winchester, Virginia.   Amy has a B.A. from Vassar College, an MAT from the Johns Hopkins University, and an M.S. in Reading from SUNY Cortland.  She has enjoyed a varied career as a high school English teacher, reading volunteer in elementary school, librarian, college development researcher, and has been involved with various business and volunteer organizations.  She is an accomplished quilter and loves to garden.  Our son Richard graduated from Hunter College with  a dual major in Art and History and a minor in Geography.  Later he received a degree in fashion design from the Fashion Institute of Technology.  After a ten year career in fashion in New York City, ending at Ann Taylor as a designer, he earned a masters degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University.  He now lives in Los Angeles and works on web-site development.  Following 9/11 Richard volunteered and served for nine years in the United States Army Reserve.

As the former Chairman of the Physics Department, I would be happy to discuss the Physics Programs at SUNY Cortland with any interested student.  The Physics Department at SUNY Cortland is a small but active Department which, over the years, has sent several students on for graduate education, careers in physics education, and interesting jobs in industry.  Feel free to contact me at:

Richard M. Wheeler
Emeritus Professor and Chairman of the Physics Department
E-mail: wheeler@cortland.edu
January 4, 2017



Curriculum Vita

Recipes

Wheeler Genealogy