Joy Adams taught all levels of painting during her 21 years of service at Ithaca College. Whether she was working with beginners or with more advanced students, she emphasized the importance of creative thinking and fostered observational skills that naturally transferred into students’ chosen professions.

She also acted as a conduit, using art instruction to make the seemingly impossible possible for the less naturally gifted and to guide and inspire other students to pursue their passion at art colleges or graduate schools. Adams’s most important contribution to the Ithaca College community has been her “Mad Sally” paintings, which came into being through a stubborn resistance to conformity and a consistently tenacious work schedule in her studio -- a place her students visited regularly. She took students to the Reconstruction Home (now Beechtree Care Center) and to other nursing homes to draw the residents. This proved to be a treat for the residents and a learning experience for the students. Adams also founded and managed the art department’s artist lecture series for several years. She continues to work long hours in her studio, as she anticipates a prestigious one-person exhibition of her Mad Sally paintings in 2008.

John Confer, associate professor of biology, began teaching at Ithaca College in 1970. For the past 37 years, he has taught a variety of courses related to his lifelong commitment to environmental studies; he also served as the coordinator of the environmental studies program from 2003 to 2006. Confer has worked closely with students in the field, obtaining external funding for several students to do research with him nearly every summer, and this is where he feels his best teaching occurred. “For all these students, that kind of intensive research experience helped them understand the science process for learning, which is valuable in assessing information throughout their lives.” His published research, concerned with the regulation of species diversity and abundance and our impact on natural ecosystems, earned him the College’s Excellence in Scholarship award in 2002. He will continue his research on the golden-winged warbler in 2007-8 as the biology department’s faculty in residence. “For me, the greatest experience has been moments of perception, when living shined brightest in some small creature I influenced. I have always felt that sharing such experiences was the most valuable experience I could provide.”

Professor Richard “Bill” Brown began his career at Ithaca College in fall 1971, after receiving his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and a master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan. He saw Ithaca College as a place where he would be rewarded for teaching students, and that “has made all of the difference,” because teaching is his passion. His teaching interests included 19th-century America, U.S. urban history, and the U.S. presidency. He served on the H&S Academic Status Committee for 30 years and participated in IC’s summer orientation for 25 years. He was a longtime history department representative to the library and a member of several library committees. His primary focus was serving students. He especially enjoyed talking to students during advising sessions and in class. Professor Brown plans to continue to live in Ithaca and hopes to continue a project studying 19th-century American political cartoons. In retirement, Brown will most miss being in front of a class, and with students and colleagues. He thanks everyone for the past 35 years, especially his students, for making his career so worthwhile.

Barbara Johnson joined the anthropology department at Ithaca College in 1991, after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts and teaching at Goddard College in Vermont. She worked with other faculty across the College to create the Jewish studies program, for which she served as coordinator and taught four different anthropology courses: Comparative Jewish Cultures; American Jewish Life; Israel: Ethnicity, Politics, and Culture; and Asian Jewish Cultures. Johnson says that “having lived and taught in India after completing my B.A. at Oberlin College, I’ve encouraged IC students to learn through personal interaction with other cultures, as well as examining their own.” Her research centers on the Cochin Jews, an ancient community in the south Indian state of Kerala. She has devoted more than 35 years to research on their history and culture in Kerala and in Israel, where most of them are now living; most recently, her research resulted in the publication of Oh, Lovely Parrot! Jewish Women’s Songs from Kerala (CD and book, 2004). Johnson reports: “I look forward very much to continuing this research after retirement.”

Heinz Koch was awarded a master’s degree in chemistry from Haverford College in 1956 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Cornell University in 1960. He arrived at Ithaca College in 1965 to pursue a career in teaching and to develop a program for undergraduate research. Since then, he has taught almost every student who majored in chemistry at IC. His courses included Organic Chemistry I, Experimental Chemistry II and III, and occasional sections of Advanced Organic Chemistry. Professor Koch always enjoyed classroom teaching but says that the single most rewarding part of his career at Ithaca College was “collaborating with undergrads on research and then following their outstanding careers.” He believes in practical, hands-on work performed by undergraduate students, and this has been the cornerstone of his approach towards his work. Evidence of experiential learning as his approach to teaching is the many journal articles he has published that list his students as coauthors for the research they had done. Professor Koch’s love of teaching took him far afield: he was an NSF faculty fellow and visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1971 to 1973, a Dana visiting professor at the University of Rochester in 1991, and he also taught at several esteemed universities in France and New Zealand.

In fall 1972, Catherine Penner came to Ithaca College to teach writing in the English department while she finished her dissertation on Andrew Marvell. In spring 1973, the instructors teaching first-year composition formed the writing program. “Thus began three decades of continual growth, beginning with the writing minor in the ‘70s [and continuing] until we won departmental status and approval of the writing major in 2000.” For 35 years, she taught courses ranging from Technical Writing for Physical Therapists to Humorous Writing. “My teaching has focused most on the many forms -- literary, personal, persuasive -- of that most plastic genre, the essay.” Professor Penner also chaired the writing program for a total of 12 years, contributing to its development of a rich curriculum and faculty from a fertile range of backgrounds. Her experience as chair has prepared her for the challenges of her new job as director of Cornell’s Adult University. “However, I will most   remember the professional and personal ties I’ve forged with my colleagues here and with particular students, whose poignant and perceptive writing is forever etched in memory.”

Although retiring from Ithaca College, Mary Ann Rishel is not retiring from teaching. In fact, she has been teaching for almost four years now in the Middle East at the Weill Cornell Medical School in Doha, Qatar, and hopes to continue this work a few years longer. She says, “The students are absolutely amazing, and it’s worth enduring the heat (summer temperatures average 120 degrees) just to teach them. Everyone in my class is culturally international, and a typical student would be Pakistani, raised in Saudi Arabia, educated in Oman, carrying a Bahraini passport. We have eight premedical students from Iraq, with more to arrive, we hope. Cornell will graduate its first group of doctors educated in Qatar in spring 2008, much to everyone’s delight. They’ll hold U.S. medical degrees.” During the Qatari holidays, she’s been fortunate to travel extensively to many countries like Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. She is anxious for peace to come to the region. When she thinks about her experience teaching writing at Ithaca College, she says, “What I enjoyed most was listening to my students share ideas. What a joy. My best wishes to everyone. IC is still home.”

Héctor Vélez-Guadalupe received his Ph.D. in sociology and Latin American studies from Cornell University. Starting at Ithaca College in 1985, he taught courses related to race and ethnicity, religion and health, social inequality, and racism and the law. Most of all, he says, “I am proud to leave a legacy of hundreds of students who participated in my course, Culture and Society: An International Field Experience. Every year for the last 15 years, a large class made up of IC and Cornell students traveled to the Dominican Republic in order to palpably feel the weight of issues and problems facing people in third world countries.” This class has at different times met high government officials, visited marginalized communities, and, once, the Dominican Congress stopped its session in order to show official hospitality and its respect to the class. Many students have written to the College years after graduating to share their experience and to outline how this one course had proven to be so instrumental in their lives after IC. His hope: “I would like to see this course continue and other courses that include international travel to become stronger as the years go by.”