By Rick Peterson
Lawrence Today magazine, Summer 2002
Three long-time members of the Lawrence faculty retired at the conclusion of the 2001-02 academic year and were recognized at Commencement and Reunion Weekend for their service to the college and its students.
[Minoo D. Adenwalla] [Cory F. Azzi, '65][William S. Boardman]
Minoo D. Adenwalla
Professor of Government and Mary Mortimer Professor of Liberal Studies
After listening to stirring Winston Churchill addresses on the BBC overseas service during World War II and then, as a teenager, watching his own country fight for its independence, it is little wonder Minoo Adenwalla developed an early interest in political science, an interest that has remained keen for more than 60 years.
Born in India, where he lived until he was 21, Adenwalla might never have made it to the United States, much less to Lawrence's government department, if it hadn't been for a little bad timing. After completing his bachelor's degree at the University of Bombay, he intended to follow the family tradition and pursue graduate school in England, but when he couldn't meet the University of Cambridge's request for the results of his bachelor's exams because he had yet to finish them, Adenwalla was told to reapply the following year.
"That ticked me off a bit," he recalls. "I'm not an impulsive person, but I decided then to apply to schools in the United States. I never had any aspirations to come here, and if it hadn't been for my reaction to Cambridge's request, I likely never would have, but I've never regretted the decision."
While regimes and ruling bodies have changed dramatically worldwide, Adenwalla has been a fixture in the government department for 43 years, teaching courses on political philosophy, constitutional law, and British and Indian politics, among others, while serving under four Lawrence presidents.
His career here might have started even earlier, save for a grant that was late in arriving. He was first offered a Lawrence faculty post in 1958 while teaching as a visiting instructor at Kenyon College, but the offer had to be withdrawn when an expected foundation grant to fund the position didn't materialize. A year later, while he was teaching at the University of Missouri, the offer was re-extended.
"I remember clearly receiving a call from President Douglas Knight one morning when I was in the shower. He said the grant had finally come through and asked if I still wanted to come to Lawrence. It was a big decision. Did I want to leave a large state university for a small liberal arts college?
"Ultimately I decided to come. I guess things haven't gone too badly."
Not too badly, indeed. Despite a rather humble start -- his first office was little more than a cubbyhole on the fourth floor of Main Hall, where he shared a single telephone with 11 other equally cramped colleagues -- Adenwalla's career at Lawrence has been rewarding and rewarded.
Ten years after joining the faculty, he was promoted to full professor. In 1989, he was named to an endowed professorship -- the Mary Mortimer Chair in Liberal Studies -- and two years later, he was honored with the college's Excellence in Teaching Award.
In 1962, thanks to a research grant, he finally had the opportunity to study in England, spending a year at London University's School of Oriental Studies. He has returned to India several times, twice with the help of research grants and three times to his birthplace of Poona as the director of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest India Studies Program.
Through the years, he developed a legendary reputation among students as a hard grader, a claim he dismisses with a defense of being "a fair grader."
Reflections on the end of his own teaching career have had Adenwalla recalling former colleagues who had left their own mark on Lawrence, among them William Riker in government, M. M. Bober in economics, Maurice Cunningham in classics, Warren Beck in English, and John Bucklew in psychology.
"They were all individualists with very strong opinions who brought luster to this campus," he says.
It is those associations with favored colleagues and the large number of students with whom he has remained in close contact with over the years that Adenwalla says he values most about his career. Those same associations are what he's sure he will miss the most, as well.
Retirement promises extended opportunities for travel to visit relatives and former students here and abroad, although Adenwalla isn't walking away from the classroom cold turkey. He has agreed to teach one course each of the next three years.
"It's enough to keep me in scotch for the year, so I'm not complaining."
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Corry F. Azzi, '65
Edwin N. and Ruth Z. West Professor of Economics
More than likely, "subtle" is one of the last adjectives that springs to mind when a description of economics professor and alumnus Corry Azzi is needed. In a world fashionably attired in grays, Azzi, '65, prefers going through life dressed to the nines in blacks and whites.
Six feet, five inches of attitude and opinion, with a voice that often suggests impatience, Azzi long has cast a commanding, if not intimidating, presence, be it in front of the classroom or tableside in the Union Grill.
A willing combatant on the academic battlefield, he revels in the good fight. He doesn't suffer fools easily and spouts sentences that sound like a talk radio host audition: "We've put such a value on open-mindedness that we think the uneducated and the ignorant are sophisticated."
Peek beyond the bluster, however, and you will find an award-winning teacher, loyal friend, and most importantly, a nurturing mentor.
"There's really more bark than bite with Corry," says Dan Alger, '72, associate professor of economics, who is both a former student and a current economics department colleague. "You learned early to not sit in the front row in his classes, but really he's more of a big pussycat."
Alger, who as a third-term senior received "a gentleman's D" from Azzi in Advanced Macroeconomics, a course he needed to graduate, credits him with providing a safety net when he needed it most -- as a struggling Lawrentian trying to figure out what life was all about.
"I got off to a rough start here," says Alger, who returned to Lawrence as a faculty member in 2000. "He reached out, with kind of a verbal hand on the shoulder, and it really helped. I would have fallen through the cracks if it weren't for Corry. He was a tremendous lifesaver."
Jill Swick, '92, also saw the less-obvious softer side of Azzi, who she says provided her the foundation upon which she's built her professional career.
"He is very straightforward; there's no fluff with him, that's for sure. But his style was perfect for me," says Swick, strategic alliances manager with California-based Printronix, Inc. "He knew I wasn't interested in pursuing a career in academics, but when I was a senior, he was right there for me. A lot of his courses have real-life implications; it wasn't all just theory. He was truly a mentor, not a reference book. That's what he did best."
One of 15 Lawrence graduates who currently are serving on the faculty, Azzi returned to his alma mater in 1970. Originally hired as the economics department's macroeconomist, he has taught 15 different courses over the years, expanding his interests into such areas as labor economics, public expenditures, and applied welfare economics, as well as his current personal favorite, industrial organization.
In the days when a lighted Camel was still allowed in the classroom, students used to make secret wagers on how long it would be before Azzi would mistakenly take a drag on the chalk in his one hand or try scribbling out an equation with the cigarette pinched in his other. But that occasional lapse didn't prevent the college from recognizing Azzi with its Excellence in Teaching Award in 1997. Two years later, he was rewarded again for his distinctive work in the classroom when he was named to the West professorship.
While a reticent dispenser of the warm and fuzzy, Azzi concedes that "teaching at a place like Lawrence can be a good life. Research done here is a labor of love, and that's one of Lawrence's virtues. The students are by and large good young men and women; unfortunately some are miseducated, but they're still a very likeable crowd of youngsters."
And as he sits under the tent of honor at Commencement in June awaiting his Master of Arts, ad eundem, degree as a retiring faculty member, he promises there will be no nostalgic, misty-eye reflections, public or private, on his nearly four-decade association with Lawrence.
"You know what I'll be thinking?" he fires back in typical booming style. "I'll be thinking, 'let's get this done so I can get up to Superior and get some fishing in.'"
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William S. Boardman
Professor of Philosophy
So much for death sentences.
Forgoing the advice of his graduate school advisor, Bill Boardman opted to use his heart, rather than his head, as his career compass. Thanks in part to a friendship with Carl Wellman, the head of Lawrence's philosophy department at the time, Boardman's University of Minnesota advisor knew of a faculty opening at Lawrence but tried his best to steer Boardman away from it.
"I thought it would be fun to teach at a small school," Boardman recalls. "My advisor told me it would be the kiss of death. I decided to come anyway."
Thirty-seven years later, after thousands of salutations of "Cheers" -- the calling card greeting he first began using as an undergraduate to compensate for an unreliable memory for names -- Boardman is following his heart once again, leaving the rigors of teaching for the leisure of reading.
"The teaching is fun. I love the students and the subject matter. I'll miss it," says Boardman, who admits he's never quite developed the same affection for the administrative side of faculty life as he did for the classroom work, "but I have a lot of things to read, especially outside of philosophy, which I don't always get a chance to do."
In the late 1980s, Boardman, along with former biology professor Michael LaMarca, began holding Friday afternoon "chat sessions" with students in the Viking Room. Discussions ranged from hot issues of the day to less burning classroom topics, and those sessions became some of Boardman"s fondest memories.
"I've never had as much fun at Lawrence as I did during those Viking Room get-togethers," he says. "These were articulate, fascinating students talking about what they were doing. It was all very interesting, and I learned about some things I didn't know much about."
It wasn't long after Boardman's 1965 arrival in Appleton that college campuses around the country became flash points for anti-Vietnam War protests, and Lawrence was no exception. While refusing to discuss the war in his classes, Boardman did organize special seminars to explore the concept of "just wars."
Calling it his "civic, moral duty," he also became a draft counselor. With training from the American Friends Service Committee, Boardman tried to help young men better understand their options.
"My job was to give them the most accurate information I could find," he says. "I never advised them to dodge the draft, because I knew they would ultimately have to pay the consequences for that, not me. But I did my best to give them correct information."
Professionally neutral, Boardman took a more aggressive personal stance against the war, letting his activism literally spill out into the streets. He participated in a protest march down College Avenue and frequently handed out anti-Vietnam War literature around town.
While he has taught a wide gamut of philosophy courses during his tenure, Boardman has always found the philosophy of law and ethics of particular interest. It led him to become involved in biomedical ethics issues both on campus and in the community at large, and he has spent more than 12 years working with Appleton Medical Center, serving as a sounding board for area families and physicians facing health-related ethical challenges.
"While much of it is very interesting, It's also very depressing," he laments. "The things that are most interesting to think about are not necessarily always so much fun to deal with."
Reflecting on a teaching career that has spanned nearly four decades, Boardman takes satisfaction in having followed his graduate student instincts without regret.
"I'd like to think I helped create a strong philosophy department at Lawrence. I think of myself as a decent teacher, a solid member of a team rather than someone who single-handedly brought about great change. If my students found my courses useful in their lives and careers, then I'll have had a good legacy."
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