Charles Stelck
Dr Charles Stelck, OCConvocation Address
University of Alberta, June 4, 2003
Eminent Chancellor, Mr President, Board Representatives, Graduands, Members of the Platform, and Honoured Guests.
To the Graduands here, congratulations to each of you, for your personal achievement in reaching this red-letter day. But I must confess that I am here under suspect background; I haven't written an exam in the past 50 years. But thank you, Dr Jones, for your kind words of introduction. To be honoured by my own alma mater makes it my red-letter day too.
Seventy years ago, I was granted a Tegler Scholarship. This paid my fees at the University of Alberta. It may come as a shock to the graduands in front of me, but $75 was the total fee for each year at that time. But this opened the doors to a life in academics, to a life as a geologist. Also, and this is a point of pride, I became an Alumnus of the University of Alberta. You graduands today are also becoming fellow members of this honoured group of Alumni.
Your fees may have been slightly higher, but then you feasted on an additional half-century of science. What a half-century! What a prolific 50 years! But what is more, our University has kept pace and our graduates are still sought out by industry and other institutions for further graduate degrees.
But let me warn you. This extra knowledge carries a tremendous burden of responsibility. When I graduated, terms like ecology, nuclear weapons, and DNA were unknown. Now these terms are the playthings of politics and the media. The ivory tower of academe is no more and the web site an open Pandora's Box.
Support the arts side of this University. Let it grow in pace. We still need these philosophical concepts of charity, ethic morality, beauty, and love to enrich the peoples of the world. Be not lost in the cubicles of science.
This brings me to the heart of our University of Alberta as I found it some three score and ten years ago. It is of the generosity of spirit, kindness and ethical behaviour that I encountered. Ignorance was to be cured by teaching and instruction; troubled students were to be gently led; and scientific discoveries were to be freely shared. Please, no patents on genes …
Allow me to digress into a short anecdote.
When I started, my close friends, Bill Morrow (later on, Chief Justice of the Northwest Territories) and Bob Folinsbee (later on, head of the Department of Geology here) were undergraduates in Law and took Geology as an easy science option. Dr Warren's lectures were repeated to me as we would walk the four miles home across the High Level Bridge. I was sold and so was Bob, and we switched to Geology the next year.
When I finished writing my first-term exam in Geology, word came that my father had died. It was President Wallace who drove me home. From then on, Dr Allan, the Head of Geology, acted as a surrogate father, Dr R.L. Rutherford and Dr P.S. Warren became like older brothers to me.
However, when we were in the "Depression" of the Thirties, you were fully employed if you worked each summer. Paddle or saddle were the options. Each winter, I came home to the University to be welcomed back into the fold, sometimes registered, sometimes not. But the professors kept me up to date in science and the students were my friends.
Students that worked with me in the Arctic became companions in survival and lifetime friends. In the post-war years, fellowships were few, and summer employment by oil and mining companies became the source of funds for winter sessions plus often topics for graduate theses. The various students that worked with me, mapping some 50,000 square kilometres in northeastern British Columbia often became co-authors on subsequent publications. And they brought in fossils.
For a decade, 50,000 fossils a year came into the University from oil exploration in Western and Arctic Canada. Warren and Stelck identified and dated them. No charge. The University was given the fossil collections for study, display, and publication.
As professors, the success of your students justifies your teaching. When Arnie Nielsen and Tony Mason discovered the Pembina oilfield, my pension was assured. When John Carr discovered Swan Hills, our salaries were increased. For the first time in 30 years, I found out that the term "poor professor" was two words, not one.
These are only two examples out of hundreds of geology graduates who found the gas and oil that our petroleum engineers developed into a major economic asset to Alberta.
Sitting on thesis laurels today is a far cry from the lonely wells I sat, 400 miles removed from the nearest production. Now the geology theses with thousands of wells to work with place me in a highly privileged position. Sixty years later, I get to what happened to the story. This is not unknown in biology, physics, and chemistry. Professors smiling as students finally worked it out.
Dr George Pemberton is still continuing the tradition of student/oil company/thesis relationships. He carries on the tradition of concerned professor. How do I know? His graduate students actually treat him as an equal, working researcher in the lab.
I was at the ceremony for the Rutherford Teaching Awards at the end of April. In the accolades to the winners were echoes of concerned professors of other departments reaching out to those young students seeking knowledge. The heart of the University is still there.
You graduate today. Let us thank all those that have supported you as I can thank my fellow professors, my students, and my family here today, especially my wife of 58 years. Let the caring heart of your alma mater go with you.
Thank you.