Westmont Magazine Celebrating Our Retirees
by Provost Mark Sargent
After 39 years, TIM WILSON’S imprint is all over Student Life, and it may be hard to imagine co-curricular partnerships without him. The longtime associate dean of students started working at Westmont in 1980. It’s not just in the policies he shaped or in the duties he undertook.
It’s in the ethos of Student Life at Westmont. It’s in the balance of discipline in the moment and redemption in the process. It’s in the joy of walking with faculty colleagues and students and relishing their creativity and curiosity (as he did on the review team recently for Westmont in Jerusalem). Or it’s in his trusting nature, contagious interest, and easy laugh. In my conversations with Tim, I have always valued that he could mix in some sportive irony— and a good story—without any cost to his magnanimity or principle. To flourish, a community of learners needs some breathing room, wonder, and restorative humor, and whenever I found that in short supply, a visit with Tim was always good therapy.
JANE WILSON always took great pride in her students at the annual Celebration of Teaching. We all know that Jane values gratitude and actually thinks it’s an art. It’s as if she hits the archives to write thank-you notes. She does research to make affirmations pitch-perfect. Those words are a gift, indeed, because they have been carefully chosen, yet just as rich is the sense that she has been paying attention to the small and significant ways that each person in her world has been contributing to the common good. On the Faculty Council, she was always the first to volunteer and then the quickest to organize our scattered promises into a coherent plan. As you might imagine, it always cheered me to discover that she also loved games, quizzes and prizes. She saw them for what they could be—not just diversions, but glue.
Jane earned a teaching credential from Seattle Pacific University and taught students in second through eighth grade. After she earned a doctorate in educational psychology at UC Santa Barbara, she began teaching and supervising student teachers. Much of her work has focused on developing strategies and situations to enhance students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. She sought to empower and equip Westmont student teacher candidates with the ability to promote intrinsic motivation in their future classrooms. She has also explored the impact that the practice of gratitude makes on students’ ability to focus and remain resilient as they learn.
MARY BLACKWOOD COLLIER loves music nearly as much as she loves French culture and the French language. She sings beautifully, delights in opera, and has written a book on Bizet’s “Carmen.” For many years, she has served as a French diction coach at the Music Academy of the West. During the Christmas season, she invites her classes to her home to enjoy her special crepes and sing carols—in French, of course.
“Mary Collier is one of the most hospitable and generous people I have ever met,” says Spanish professor Mary Docter. “She routinely opens her home—and her heart—to those of us who are new and finding our way. She has truly been an inspiration and a gift.”
Along with her affection for French language and culture, Mary Collier loves art, gardens, sports cars, and hot air balloons—and hopes, someday, to soar over Paris.
Mary began teaching at Westmont in 1981 and completed a doctorate at the Université de Paris, Sorbonne. The French government knighted her as a Chevalier dans l’Order des Palmes Académiques in gratitude for the many ways she has promoted the French language and culture. At the ceremony, David Martinon, consul general of France, Los Angeles, cited French novelist Marcel Pagnol when he referred to the honor as “the highest distinction the French Republic can give because it celebrates not only knowledge but the art of spreading it amongst students.”
Mary is known for helping students memorize Scripture in French. Registrar Michelle Hardley recalls how Mary’s tutelage prepared her to recite Psalm 23 in front of her church on an international Sunday. “Mary taught us all how to say ‘um’ in the French fashion,” Hardley says. “That way, if we ever needed to pause for a moment in conversation, we could at least sound more sophisticated.”
Computer science professor Don Patterson describes RAY ROSENTRATER as “the quintessential Renaissance person” and “an amazing colleague” with “a deep appreciation for math done well” who “tirelessly advocates for students to see the discipline as a creative rather than mechanical endeavor.” Patterson adds, “He is also a great role model for being human: he publishes thoughtful writing about math, he is an avid bicycle rider, he protests the lack of a Labor Day holiday with an annual picnic in Winter Hall, and he leads singing in class and at church.”
A graduate of Messiah College, Ray earned an M.S. in computer science from the University of Toronto and completed his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Indiana. He began his career at Westmont in 1980. He has received teaching and research awards and won a Fulbright scholarship to Honduras in 1995. His 2015 book, “The Varieties of Integration,” explores how different definitions of the integral can influence proof techniques and computational strategies.
Math professor Patti Hunter, one of Ray’s students, says, “From my first semester as a student in Ray’s calculus class to the present day, I have benefited from his support. He encourages all his students to persevere through the challenges of mathematics, and he has especially been a champion of women in mathematics.”
“The Wizard of Oz was, in reality, rather ordinary, but he projected a phony grandiose image,” says math professor Russ Howell. “In many ways, Ray is the opposite: He is in reality extraordinary, yet he projects a genuinely humble image. He is a terrific teacher, first-class researcher, and well- organized administrator; his position may be replaced, but he will not be.”