Arlen Zander:
CLASS OF 1959
Shiner High SchoolClass of 1959
Shiner, TX
Arlen's Story
As I review the years since SHS, I see ups, downs and significant learning experiences, but there is little I would have changed. Life has been good, mainly because I have had so many good people around me. Whatever successes I have enjoyed are due in no small part to the advice and support of these folks-especially my wife, Dorothy.
Dorothy is a Czech lady from Cameron, TX, who I married the same week I completed my B. S. in Physics at UT in 1964. We moved to Bartlesville, OK, where I did neutron physics for Phillips Petroleum Company. The next year, Florida State offered me a Nuclear Sciences Fellowship for graduate study, so we moved to Tallahassee.
In my last year of graduate school, our daughter Melanie was born and I applied to NASA to become a Scientist-Astronaut. Two weeks later NASA announced a hiring freeze for the program¿my app must have really been terrible! Having failed to space out, I narrowed my job choices to McGill U in Montreal and what was then East Texas St U (now Texas A&M) in Commerce¿and chose Commerce! (Have you ever been to Canada in the winter?) So when I completed my Ph. D. in nuclear physics in 1970, we moved to Commerce.
We quickly adapted to Commerce because it was so similar to our small town roots and I realized that I really liked medium-sized universities. So we spent the next 19 years in Commerce where our sons Aaron and Bryan were born and I advanced through the academic ranks to become ...Expand for more
Dean of Arts & Sciences.
While at ETSU, I also did contract research on atomic collisions at Oak Ridge Nat¿l Lab for eight years and was awarded a NATO Fellowship that allowed me to travel/lecture in several European countries. In 1986, I did research at the British Museum in London and wrote a series of articles on Halley¿s Comet that won an international science-writing award.
In 1989, I accepted the position of VP for Academic Affairs at the U of Louisiana in Monroe, and two years later was named Provost, a position I held until my retirement in 2001.
We moved to Round Rock, TX, in 2003, and I have become heavily involved in volunteer work. I serve as a trainer/handler for Therapy Pet Pals of Texas, work with a Golden Retriever rescue organization, and chair the county Health Board. Recreational/relaxation activities include racquetball, road and mountain bicycling, piano, fishing, hunting, and classical music. Our favorite vacations spots are the Virgin Islands and the Amalfi Coast of Italy.
Significant learning experiences included playing on the softball team that integrated the recreation program during the Tallahasse desegregation riots/firebombings of 1968, spending hours detained by heavily armed East German border guards who refused to let us (a small group of American scientists) cross the Wall back into West Berlin in 1983, and lecturing at Beijing University when the Tiananmen Square uprising occurred in 1989.
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