GUEST COLUMN: Goodbye Goober: A tribute to MAE professor Carl Wood
Just this week, flashing red lights hit Mechanical Aerospace Engineering students when they heard Dr. Carl Wood is leaving Utah State like ” Rapid Roy the Stock Car Boy”. Carl leaves an imprint on the minds, hearts and LL Bean flannel shirts of engineering Aggies everywhere. As such, we’d like to reminisce a little on what made our favorite principle lecturer both fierce and icky: Carl’s down-to-earth attitude extended to his name. Those who first meet him are warned to call him “Carl” – because “if it was good enough for my mom, then its good enough for you”. He told us if we dared call him “Dr. Wood” he would “respond, but probably with snotty comments.” Carl would leave his Folgers-coffee-smelling office (which always blared Eric Clapton) with his wagon full of “show and tells” that he would project up in front of one of his many design classes and give us a question of the day. Somehow, whatever the object, it always seemed to break due to “classic fatigue failure” and we were often reminded that “fatigue is a tensile phenomena – file that in the ‘Rolodex of life'”. Our Rolodex of life grew large from Carl as we learned invaluable mechanical advice like: “You can’t get neater than bearings,” “plagiarism is fundamental to design,” “lock washers are commonly used by the ignorant and stupid” and “vandalism is sometimes an option”. However, even for those less math-enthused, Carl’s one-liners apply to any classroom environment: “Let’s kill you off with a little WebCT here … it hurts so good!” We’re going to watch a video for 15 minutes, I hope you can stay awake, and if you can’t, I don’t even care” And, “That’s a pretty healthy lecture to pound a dozen donuts in one hour.”
Carl once told us, “I’m the goober of goobers … the ubergoober.” Yet we owe so much to this goober for his interest in us, ultra-excitement for engineering and for our favorite Carl phrase “let’s call it a day”. As Carl and Utah State finally call it a day, some of us will remember nothing more than his stories of the large turbine engines and the ever-famous “Pteranadon flyer” roller coaster. But hopefully a number of us will remember that “old boy” as more than a teacher; as our friend. So here’s to Carl, the most student quoted and imitated member of the MAE faculty. A tribute to that humble, capable instructor, who managed to refrain from the metric system all these years – “when I was born, I was measured in inches, and that’s good enough for me”. Well Carl, you’ve been good enough for us.
This tribute was written by Eli Wilson, an MAE student, in behalf of all the MAE students.