James Costello
The Edgar M. Carlson Award for Innovative Teaching was established by the Board of Trustees of Gustavus Adolphus College to honor our former president both for his years of superb administrative leadership and for his commitment to excellence in instruction. The award is made possible by an annual grant of $1500 from Mr. Arnold J. Ryden, long a distinguished trustee and benefactor of the college. Each year it is presented to a member of the Gustavus faculty in recognition of particularly effective teaching.
The recipient of this year’s award is Professor James Costello of the Department of Physics.
My own thoughts about Jim Costello, when collated with those of his departmental colleagues, his students, and his other friends, form a succinct manual of what constitutes eminence in a faculty member. An expression of these thoughts today also represents a kind of valedictory, for Jim is about to leave us – perhaps in response to the imperative of Horace Greeley, but clearly at the promptings of his own life style, aimed as it is against hunger and pollution and toward the responsible use of energy and the quest for peace.
Raised by affectionate foster parents, at age 16 he roared out of Hershey, Nebraska – part farm boy, part cowboy, I am told – to major in physics at Doane College, a few counties away in Crete. He received his Bachelor’s degree in 1959. At Doane, where he met his lovely wife, Susan, and at the University of Nebraska, where he earned the degrees of Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy as well as the respect of his teachers, he continues to be remembered. What memory preserves is a man whose broad interests included not only science, but also science fiction, novels, poetry, music, games, indeed anything in the life of humanity or the sphere of nature that posed an intriguing problem. Recollection also gives evidence of a man whose broad affections were so strongly centered in young people and their futures that the instruction of undergraduates seemed a nearly ineluctable course of future action.
He joined the Gustavus faculty in 1966. As his fellow teachers took early notice, he manifested a capacity to reach beyond the well-motivated and gifted students toward those who approached science with some apprehension. And, together with Professors Julian Crawford, Richard Fuller and others, he has labored to build Physics into one of the premier departments of the college.
It is an unsettling experience to engage Jim Costello’s students in conversation about him because it compels a reexamination of one’s own instructional priorities. No matter how large the class, he learns the name of each student at the beginning of the term. He is a master of what behaviorists call “positive reinforcement,” which is to say that he is a strengthener of youthful egos, an advocate of personal involvement, and a creator of the spirit of adventurous fun. He gives the appearance of having unlimited time to talk with students, whether as an advisor in the technical sense or simply as an encouraging friend. And he is not only at home in the world of quasars, pulsars, and relativity theory, but also possesses the gift of drawing analogies which make the initially incomprehensible and abstract into something warm, familiar, alive and unmistakably practical.
In summary, as a scientist and teacher of science, Professor James Costello has come to be appreciated as an artist and humanist of the first magnitude.
Jim – I am honored at this opportunity to present to you the 1975 Edgar M. Carlson Award for Innovative Teaching.
Presented by Jack L. Clark
Professor of Religion and Classics
1974 Recipient of the Edgar M. Carlson Award