http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================
*By Michael Karle*

**/Arts and Features Editor/

//

Since the 1960s, a great deal has changed at Colgate University. What
was once a small, all-male college has now grown to become a well-known
coed liberal arts institution. In fact, over the last three decades, one
of the few things that has remained constant at Colgate is Anthony Aveni.

Aveni is currently the Russell B. Colgate Professor of Astronomy and
Anthropology. Now in his 35th year at the University, Aveni started
teaching at Colgate when he was only 25, fresh out of graduate school
from the University of Arizona.

"My wife of 38 years and I are both from Connecticut," Aveni said. "It
was a great opportunity to teach at a small college in the east, so we
took the job thinking it would be one year ... then two ... then three."
Now, 35 years later, he continues to teach courses in anthropology and
astronomy at Colgate.

Aveni first become interested in astronomy at the young age of six. "I
remember one night, very vividly, coming home from my grandmother's
house, lying in the back seat of the car and looking up through the back
window. And every time the car turned, the sky would move and I could
see the Milky Way twisting and turning," Aveni said.

"The next day, I went to my teacher to get a book about the stars. I had
an uncle who always helped me with his telescope, and I used to go up
what then seemed like a mountain and look through it. I saved up my
allowance and bought my own telescope. It took me until I was eleven.

"I remember one of my big disappointments was, when I was in high
school, going to a professor and asking what I had to do to be an
astronomer," Aveni continued. "`Young man, you've got to take Physics.'
I had no idea that calculating forces on pulleys and sliding hockey
pucks across ice had anything to do with astronomy, but as it turns out,
it did."

Aveni majored in Physics and Mathematics at Boston University, and went
to graduate school at the University of Arizona, where he worked at the
Kitt Peak National Observatory.

"I write in my book, /Empires of Time/, that I think that what happens
to you in life very much depends upon how fast the current is moving at
the place where you step into the stream of life. You can really get
carried along if you hit the stream at the right time."

Aveni hit the stream at the perfect time; he attended the University of
Arizona just as they built the national observatory. As a result, he saw
the faculty quintuple during his years there. "I was lucky to have an
outstanding graduate education at the number-one school for astronomy,"
he said.

After leaving Arizona, Aveni needed a job where he could continue to
work on the dissertation for his Ph.D. "My advisor told me, `Let's pick
a place where you don't have to do a lot of work, where you can just go,
teach a few courses and work on your dissertation,'" Aveni stated.

"I was lucky enough to be in the job market the very year that President
Kennedy said we'd put a man on the moon, so there were a lot of jobs,"
he said. "I remember going through all the job offerings that I got off
the bulletin board ... and of course Colgate was the eastern one, and we
were easterners.

"So I called up the head of the department and it didn't take long for
them to hire me. I hadn't really done anything yet, but I was hired over
the telephone without an interview." With his wife and two children in
tow, Aveni moved to Hamilton in 1962 to begin his teaching career at
Colgate.

"I had never done that before, I'd never taught," Aveni explained. "I
must have made a lot of mistakes on my early students, but it was a
great opportunity to practice my art. As time went on, the students got
more interesting and the pay got better, not a lot of money, but then it
wasn't even five figures in the beginning."

When Aveni first started teaching, there was only one advanced
astrophysics course and one course in astronomy, a hybrid of Astronomy
101 and 102 compacted into one semester and titled Planets, Stars and
Galaxies.

"I was given free reign to apply for National Science Foundation
grants," Aveni said, "which I did, to purchase our telescope. I have to
say, being in charge of a program at the age of 25 is a great experience.

"So the early years here were great. I have to say that the people in
this institution were very open. They were the first people to treat me
as a professional. They've always trusted me and allowed me to do my own
thing, and so what was an ordinary job then turns out to be very special
to me now."

Outside of the classroom, Aveni worked to develop a joint concentration
with the geology department in the late 1960s called Astrogeophysics.
When Colgate acquired its telescope in 1966, Aveni was then able to
train his students not just in the liberal arts but in what he called
serious astronomy.

In 1970, Aveni also pioneered the field of Archeoastronomy. At that
time, Colgate had a January term, and as Aveni said, "We were all
required to dream up brilliant ways to encourage our students to do
things they hadn't done before." Observatory experiments in January
tended to cause frostbite, so Aveni came up with a warmer project.

"My students and I had the idea to go to Mexico to study the orientation
of the pyramids, which happened to be a hot topic in the '60s."
Accompanied by a professor of the Geology Department and half a dozen
students, Aveni drove 11,000 miles in station wagons to and throughout
Mexico for over 31 days.

"We took surveying equipment with us," Aveni remembered, "and we
realized, surprisingly, that nobody had studied these buildings as
calendrical observatories. So we initiated the study of Archeoastronomy,
which then got picked up by other schools."

By definition, Archeoastronomy is "the study of ancient astronomy, using
both the written record and the unwritten record, by which I mean
architecture," Aveni said. "It's now a pretty standard sub-discipline in
Archaeology."

Since then, Colgate students have made over two dozen trips to Mexico.
However, with the end of the January term in 1989, it is now students in
the SOAN 354 spring term class who have the option of meeting Aveni in
Mexico on the first of January.

"Lo and behold, a lot of students gave up their vacations to do it,"
Aveni said. "I've had some of my best students since the mid-80s really
get involved in this and I still have some right now."

One of the highlights of Aveni's career came in 1982, when he received
the National Professor of the Year Award. Presented by the Council for
the Advancement and Support of Education, this award annually honors the
best professor in the country.

According to Aveni, each institution in the country may nominate one
professor for consideration. He attributes his award was due to the
supportive and innovative environment at Colgate. "I think that one of
the primary reasons that had to do with my getting the award was the
institution where I teach, which does a lot of different things."

Aveni was presented the award at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. that was
also attended by the Marine Corps band and Vice President George Bush. "
I think it did Colgate a lot of good," Aveni said. "It certainly did my
mother a lot of good!"

Aveni is currently finishing a book updating the work he did at Nasca,
Peru, studying the giant animal figures and straight lines drawn on the
desert floor.

Aveni also continues to do occasional television appearances. He has
recently appeared on the Learning Channel and was featured on the
Discovery Channel last spring. "I'm of a mixed mind about doing these
kinds of things," Aveni said, "but I'll go along with my friend Carl
Sagan, who suggested that it was very important for people in
specialized disciplines, like the sciences, who actually undertake the
work, to try and explain it to the public in plain English."

Next semester, Aveni will not have any teaching obligations. Instead, he
expects to spend his time working on an Archeoastronomy project in
southern Italy, continuing some work on the Etruscans that he began many
years earlier. He also plans to go to Aruba to see the total eclipse of
the sun, and as a result will spend little time on campus next semester.

Looking back on his thirty-five years at Colgate, Aveni remarked that
the University is now "bigger and better. It's double the size it was
when I came here, and it's double the gender. Look at the programs we
have. There were two study groups when I came here, Washington, D.C. and
Florence, and now we proliferate. And just look at the quality of the
faculty. What's important is quality teaching and keeping up the
research which relates to teaching, and I think the faculty here really
do that.

"I will say that the status of this institution relative to the other
liberal arts colleges is much higher than it was," Aveni continued.
"It's a much more exciting place to be. Students are more diverse ... I
can remember when most of the students were local and from downstate. To
me, to have students with a more diverse background educates me. And I'm
here to learn. The day that I'm not going to learn is the day I'm
quitting. And I really think that I learn a lot from the students who
come to Colgate."