Longtime professors explain love for teaching Headline

The professors at IU are a fascinating and diverse crowd. Many of them have dedicated much of their lives to advance knowledge in a specific area of study. These teachers have spent years challenging, inspiring, and educating students to give IU renown and recognition.\nJudith H. Anderson, a chancellor's professor in the English Department, and Victor E. Viola, Jr., a distinguished professor in the Chemistry Department and an adjunct professor in the Physics Department, are two professors that have left their mark on IU. Both professors have a long history with the University and have worked diligently during their time at IU.\nAnderson has been on IU's faculty since 1974, when she came here with her husband. \n"For me it is the quality of the department and also the eclecticism over the long term, the strength of the library in the humanities and the community within the University which I enjoy most about working at Indiana," Anderson said. \nAnderson specializes in Renaissance and early modern literature that spans from the 16th to 17th century and typically ends with the death of John Milton in 1674. Her research here includes intellectual and cultural history, and allegory and metaphor. Anderson believes one needs a well-rounded historical perspective to gain insight into the modern world. \n"If you do not have solid historical knowledge you are forever reinventing the wheel," Anderson said. \nShe believes that through gaining historical as well as literary insight we can begin to answer very important questions about our society today. \n"To a larger extent than we recognize we are living with the consequences of early modern theory. What a fact is, has changed," Anderson said. "There has been a real narrowing of this concept." \nBefore coming to IU, Anderson had taught at Cornell, Michigan, and Yale. She received her Bachelor's degree at Radcliffe College and gained her M.A. and Ph.D. at Yale. She has published "Biographical Truth: The Representation of Historical Persons in Tudor-Stuart Writing", "Words That Matter: Linguistic Perception in Renaissance English", and has a work coming out soon which focuses on metaphor, culture, and classical rhetoric during the reigns of the Tudors and Stewarts in England. She teaches a mix of graduate and undergraduate classes at IU. \n"I don't believe in the separation of research and teaching. The two feed on each other," Anderson said.\nViola has spent 25 fruitful years at IU. He is known for his work in nuclear and physical chemistry. Viola recently has finished a project he has been involved in for 15 years. The aim of the project was to investigate the formation dynamics and decay mechanisms of hot nuclear matter. \n"Basically, we showed how to boil a nuclei. Most of the recent studies were done at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York," Viola said. \nThis project will help the scientific community better understand terrestrial experiments with nuclei as well as it may give some insight into the nuclear science behind Supernova explosions. \n"(After the explosion) theoretically what is left is a neutron star. That neutron star is thought to be made up primarily of liquid and made of neutrons," Viola said. "We are looking at the reverse of the process which occurs with the explosion of a Supernova. However, the connection is tenuous."\nHe also has helped to show how Beryllium, Lithium, and Boron were formed in an astrophysics sense of the word and has received many awards for his overall work in the field of nuclear chemistry. These include a Guggenheim Fellowship and an IU Teaching Excellence award, He is known for teaching Freshman Chemistry and a Viola received his bachelor's degree at the University of Kansas and his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. He said his high school football and basketball coaches along with many colleagues of his he has met throughout the years as personally his biggest influences.\n"If you don't like challenges don't go into science. I think that is true with most fields though. Whatever you do you have to enjoy it," Viola said. \nThis year is Viola's last and he will go into full retirement once the summer is up. \n"We look at a problem, understand it at a certain level," he said, "but a new answer is bound to bring up new questions"