I'm retiring from Brandeis after 41 years

I decided to apply for the Voluntary Retirement Program which provides a year of full salary and medical with no teaching or service requirements, if you apply by 12/3/2025. My last day as a tenured Brandeis Professor will be in December 2026!
I started teaching at Brandeis in 1984 and in the past 41 years I've taught about 5000 students. Teaching has always been very rewarding for me and I've learned much from my students, and many of my former students have become life long friends.
I will miss teaching (though I may try to teach summer school courses). With my cancer journey, I can't guarantee that I can teach for 15 weeks straight without having to go back to the hospital for weeks at a time.
I have taught about 90 regular Brandeis courses, 30 Transitional Year Program courses, 10 Justice Brandeis Semester summer programs, 10 pre-college App Design programs, and about 50 independent study courses (both individual and group). It has been my honor and privilege to teach so many bright, curious, and ambitious students, and I will miss it!
I've also published about 100 papers that have received about 2400 citations. according to google scholar:
Pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge has also been very rewarding and in the process I have mentored 11 PhD students;
I was also chair of the Computer Science Department twice for a total of 12 years, and was chair of the Science Council for one year and chair of the Faculty Senate for two years, as well as serving on dozens of high impact committees. I enjoyed serving in leadership positions and doing what I could to help Brandeis better meet its mission.
If I didn't have stage IV Lung Cancer then I wouldn't think of retiring for a few more years at least. It is a very exciting time for Computer Science with the rise of sophisticated AI models able to do coding and theorem proving; it is challenging the profession to reimagine how we use AI to do research, development, and education... so exciting!
During my retirement I'll have more time to focus on beating this cancer, but also on developing the Mastery Learning App that I've been working on for the past 5 or so years, most recently with Profs Torrey and Merrill in the Math Department and Prof Tuson in Computer Science.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Detour -- abdominal surgery and loss of left leg mobility

Image
 Last Saturday 5/2/2026, at 10:30pm, I had the worst pain I had ever experienced  My belly was extremely bloated and very painful so Yas checked me into the ER and I got IV morphine. On Sunday at 4pm 5/3 I had abdominal surgery to cut out a 20cm section of my small intestine with a big hole in it. It’s not clear what caused it.  I wasn’t allowed eat or drink anything until my intestines started to work again by passing gas, which just barely started after 9 days on 5/11. We don't know the cause of the perforated colon, but tissue samples have been sent to the lab. I've also lost motor control of most of my left leg, so I'll be transferred to Spaulding Acute Rehab hospital next week to regain my mobility.  I can pivot on my good leg to/from my bed and a commode or chair. We also don't know the cause of the mobility loss but its probably brain inflammation similar to last year. They detected some AFIB episodes so put me on another medication and will have me wear a hea...
Read more

An Unexpected Journey and a PSA - 7/27/2025

For those who have known me more than 30 years, you know that I was a heavy smoker (a pack day from age 15 to age 40) but I stopped 30 years ago before my daughter Caitlin was born. The old policy was that if you stopped smoking more than 15 years ago, then your risk level for cancer was the same as for non-smokers. Last year, the policy changed and anyone who smoked a pack a day for 20 or more years is advised to get an annual low-dose lung cancer CT scan. If you smoked heavily for 20 or more years, I *strongly* encourage you to get an annual low-dose lung cancer CT scan. It is inexpensive and can literally save your life! When caught early, lung cancer can be cured with radiation and/or lung surgery quickly and easily, with no need for chemo-therapy! I had such a scan in April and it detected a nodule in the right upper lobe of my lung. A robotic bronchoscopy (so cool!) got a biopsy sample which was confirmed to be cancer (adenocarcinoma). A PET scan (also amazingly cool) indica...
Read more

Coasting toward remission

Image
  I met with my main oncologists today, Drs. Costa and Caradonna, and we reviwed my medical history and made a plan.   My brain MRI came back with no new mets and some of the lesions have shrunk.  My LFTs dropped (by about 50%) today.  They are still quite high but moving rapidly in the right direction. I have an appointment with my hepatologist on March 5th and if the blood tests are close to the normal range then they'll start tapering me off the CellCept and Prednisone, and I'll only be on my anti-seizure medication Kepra, which I can stop taking in May. We probably won't do any more Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) infusions; partly because I had a Stage 3 adverse effect as my immune system has been attacking my liver; and partly because it seems that the Pembro has trained my killer T-cells to effectively kill my cancer cells, so I don't need any more immunotherapy at this point. From now on I will just be getting CT and MRI scans every two months and we hope (and ...
Read more