Heather Riggs:: Okay. Let's try it.
Rod Sinks::  Testing. Testing 1 2 3.
Heather Riggs:: Okay.
Rod Sinks::  Great.
Heather Riggs:: Yep. So just name, class year, and your free to-
Rod Sinks::  My name is Rod Sinks. I’m a member of the, proud member, of the class of 1981. I was a Physics major and I currently live in Cupertino, California.
Heather Riggs:: Great. So is there anything in particular that you'd like to talk about?
Rod Sinks::  Well, I would like to talk about a couple of the outstanding professors I had at this college. I was on an overseas program, a Rotary student in Sweden and wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, coming to college. But I did know that I was a really good writer. I was confident about that. I, back in the day when there weren’t, entering freshman didn’t have eight or twelve AP credits, AP classes coming in. I was very proud to have received a five in the AP History.
Rod Sinks::  I found that, and I thought my writing was really rather excellent and I think Professor Ken Christiansen who I’d like to first talk about observed this, that I was somewhat arrogant and not really open to new ideas. So, with all the attention and energy I could muster, I took his Four Problems of Man Tutorial and in every essay I executed it with all the energy and thought that I could put in. But he detected that I thought I, I was maybe, I knew too much, that I already had things figured out. So, he prepared to take apart every one of my papers with red ink, and he made me write them over again, not just once but maybe a couple of times.
Heather Riggs:: Wow.
Rod Sinks::  Yeah, I felt, this was brutal. This was terrible. "What’s this guy that knows about cave bugs telling me about writing?" was my attitude. So it took me a few papers. I think it was one, the Fourth Problem of Man, where I finally figured out, out of four, that I finally figured out what he’s really trying to teach me about wasn’t anything particular about my writing but it was rather my attitude and approach to learning. That is, being open to the fact that I had a lot to learn and I needed to get the chip off my shoulder.
Rod Sinks::  So, in that sense he was a wonderful advisor and the other thing I remember so vividly is the magnificent breakfasts we would have while we were in his house. I mean, there’s an experience that you just don’t get at a major university. I left here after two and half years, went back to Sweden and then transferred to Stanford because I ultimately decided I wanted to be an engineer and a physicist, and I got two degrees there.
Rod Sinks::  But, the teaching was just nothing to be compared to the teaching here and that, that experience of having him detect my attitude and then working with me to fix it. I was stubborn and people to this day call me very stubborn, but he, he did a great job in fixing that attitude in me. So, the attitude now is, I have still a lot to learn so I come back regularly for Alumni College and learn something new about things I just know nothing about. And I’m privileged to be able to do that.
Rod Sinks::  I’d like to talk about another man here who was a great influence in my life, and that’s Charlie Duke. Charlie had a wonderful way of introducing Physics, and I had no idea I wanted to be a Physics major when I showed up in his freshman class. But over the course of the year I grew to love Physics through his approach to the subject and his mentoring and his care.
Rod Sinks::  I was almost doomed to sit on the side of I-80, the summer of my freshman year, and introduce people to the wonders of Nebraska which I would’ve found really hard, being from Minnesota, but my family had moved there. But, at the last minute Charlie swooped in and said, “Here, we’ve got an NSF grant and I want you to help me develop this electronics course for the College.” So I got to spend the summer my freshman year with Charlie Duke, learning cool things about electronics and teaching methods and KIM microcomputers and all of these things.
Rod Sinks::  These are just experiences I couldn’t have had, I’m quite convinced, at a bigger place. I mean, certainly, I compared notes when I got to Stanford and, yeah, I had some wonderful and unique experiences. I worked at Sony in Manhattan one summer also, through an alumnus from Grinnell, through an alumnus connection. So living in Manhattan one summer, all these things, I think, were really unique and special. So I have a great, although I was only here five semesters, it was really one of the most memorable parts of my life to be here and have the privilege of learning from two great teachers and many more.
Heather Riggs:: Wow, that’s really wonderful. How do you feel like the campus has changed since you’ve been here?
Rod Sinks::  Well, you know most of the professors who I knew from this era are now senior faculty or retired, so that’s a change. You know, it’s mostly about the people. Yeah, the physical facilities have changed, I’m glad for that. I think it’s, students deserve something better than Cowles Dining Hall. I don’t know about, Cowles, yeah. I don’t know about the Quad, I, a little, pretty connected to dining at the Quad but yeah.
Rod Sinks::  The Bucksbaum Center – or the Rosenfield Center is beautiful, right? And I can see why there’s a great attraction. Although, I’ve talked to some of the current students and they seemed to complain about the food just as much as my class ever did so I think it probably has less to do with the quality of the food and the variety and more about the fact that any place you dine for nine months a year probably gets a little old after a while. Have to go into town or get to the Amana Colonies or whatever you’re gonna do.
Heather Riggs:: Yeah.
Rod Sinks::  It’s, I think the campus building that’s gone on has been very thoughtful. I just finished a tour of the Science Building. Bob Noyce would’ve been thrilled with that. I met him once when he was a Trustee and came to the College, and, subsequently, went into engineering and electronics and used, and built on much of the innovation that he created so I’ve been involved with a couple of start-ups in Silicon Valley in the last 20 years and I have so much admiration for what he did and it’s a great thing for me, as an engineer, to come back and see this magnificent science facility in particular.
Heather Riggs:: First of all, why did you decide to come to Grinnell?
Rod Sinks::  I was from Minneapolis. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, hence I went off on a Rotary program and then I came back and contemplating what was next, I thought liberal arts was perfect and Grinnell was far enough away from home. But y’know, yeah, it was just far enough away from home. I didn’t feel like I, it was two hours away but I was within a comfortable day’s drive away, so this is a good location and I’d had a friend who had come a year before me and wrote me in Sweden of the wonderful faculty experience he was having here, so.
Heather Riggs:: What are some of your strongest memories of your time at Grinnell?
Rod Sinks::  Well. I think the ones I’ve described are probably the best and strongest memories I have. I do, socially, I fondly remember dancing in the Quad, doing the waltz because I enjoyed waltzing, believe it or not. So looking forward to that program, Saturday, yeah, it’ll be great.
Heather Riggs:: If you were writing a history of Grinnell College, what events from your time would you include?
Rod Sinks::  All the turmoil on campus in the 70s. So, we had a session in the Alumni College about apartheid, and our push, the push of students on campus asking the Trustees to boycott companies that did business with South Africa, so that was very important to students.
Heather Riggs:: Did they eventually boycott?
Rod Sinks::  Well, eventually, but it took a long time. George Drake has the definitive story on this, as he was President at the time. I think the, it’s less for me, events and more about the people. The students and the experience that was unique to me obviously in telling these stories I recognize that people in other departments had these relationships with guys like Glen Moyer and bless his heart, Ira Strauber, and faculty all over the campus. Really, very special experience to be, to get, to be intimate, frankly, with people of such stature and really focused on teaching. Helping students learn for themselves and develop that life-long pattern of learning, which I think is vital. In the technology sector, in which I work, if you’re not learning all the time you’re dead. So, I think that, that attitude was as important as any specific science or math or later, engineering courses that I took.
Heather Riggs:: Yeah that’s really interesting- just thinking about coming to Grinnell at some point and learning skills just for life and learning.
Rod Sinks::  Yeah, more of the latter, I think. So, looking at what Jim Schwartz describes now as the, the reason that the Science Building is set up the way it is, the attention that was paid to having students collaborate, vast improvement over the Science Building that I was in. And, more of what people do in the real world. I mean, they’re on the Internet; they’re searching for information and not simply listening to the professor but more collaborating. So, he has an idea and I found some relevant information on the Internet and as we’re having the discussion, we’re contributing. I think that’s the model of what learning oughta look like in the 21st century. I’m really glad to see that the College has embraced it.
Heather Riggs:: How do you feel like your Grinnell education specifically influenced your path in your life? Did you always know that you wanted to be an engineer?
Rod Sinks::  No, no, not at all. Coming here and taking various classes actually didn’t help me per se, because I found, as I drilled down into Philosophy or Music or Political Philosophy or whatever it was, that I liked all those things, too. So actually it was kind of confusing and, OK, finally I left. I went back to Sweden and then I said OK, Physics, Engineering or something else. Finally decided I like building things, so that helped me sort it out. But, I think it was rather a broad-based education I got which gave me a passion for learning about things completely unrelated, for example, to my career. So that’s cool. So I’ve gone back and taken other coursework elsewhere, for example, History with brilliant scholars because I remember certain lectures here and so I said OK, I wanna enrich my life learning new things that have nothing to do with making money or achieving in a career, directly, at least.
Heather Riggs:: What are the most important life lessons you learned from Grinnell?
Rod Sinks::  Well, keep going, keep learning, be curious. I think those were the things.
Heather Riggs:: There are a couple other questions here if you have any others that you really want to respond to.
Rod Sinks::  I’m good.
Heather Riggs:: No? Anything to add?
Rod Sinks::  I’m good.
Heather Riggs:: OK, well, thanks so much!
Rod Sinks::  You’re welcome.
