Prof. Langley's Toast to Theresa
I'm a relative newcomer to the department, having only been here 15 years. So I don't know Theresa as well as some of you. Or maybe I do since I had the pleasure to work closely with Theresa during the 2-1/2 years I was coerced into being the titular Director of Graduate Studies or the DoGS. I say titular (that means existing only in name), because Theresa was the real DoGS. She has looked after the well-being of the grad students, handling the initial inquiries and applications, and after the students got here, making sure that they had a place to stay, arranging for their stipends or allowances, making sure they were looking after themselves, blowing their noses -- everything a mother would. In fact, Theresa has been a surrogate mother for quite a few of our grad students and some of them really did need mothering (where did their own mothers go wrong or were they born under a cabbage leaf?).
I'm not sure when Mother Theresa actually started looking after our graduate students - whether she was doing it when she had a half-time position in the department or after she went full time during the 1984/85 academic year. But a John McLaughlin estimate (also known as a guess) is that she looked after more than 200 graduate students during her time in the department. Many of them finally grew up under her tutelage.
Theresa brought more than mothering skills to the department. For example, she was able to keep the titular DoGs organised so that it looked like he knew what was going on. Not a trivial job considering that the department has the largest graduate program offering a Ph.D. degree of any department in the university. She kept most of the other faculty members in line too. And Theresa mastered the terminology of geomatics in both official languages and was more adept with the computer than some of my colleagues, many of which, it is rumoured, have engineering degrees. Theresa always seemed to have a cheery disposition -- even when cleaning up after the pigs in the coffee room. In fact, I can't remember her ever having a bad hair day. I think that's what we might miss the most.
I could go on and on, but without an overhead projector and visual aids, I'd start to repeat myself.
John says that you should finish up a talk -- or a toast -- with a joke. If someone tells me a joke, I've forgotten it 5 minutes later. Luckily we have the World Wide Web now so we don't have to remember anything -- we can just look it up. So, I looked for a retirement joke but I couldn't find an appropriate one. There was one involving a husband, a wife, and the retiring mailman, but I can't tell it in mixed company. I tried for secretary jokes too but I didn't think it prudent to tell any of those. So I'll tell a professor joke instead:
A Department Head, a Director of Graduate Studies, a Full Professor and an Assistant Professor decided to go fishing. Early the next morning the four got up and headed out to the lake. They had gotten almost clear to the other side to a favoured fishing spot when the Director of Graduate Studies exclaimed that he had forgotten the bait. "No problem," said the Assistant Professor and jumped out of the boat, ran across the water to the dock on the other side of the lake and returned with bait in hand. "I don't know," groused the Department Head, "do you really think we should grant someone tenure who's never learned to swim?"
We already miss you, Theresa, but somehow the department will try to carry on without you. Enjoy your retirement, Theresa. All the best.