Eric R. Nelson, Ph.D.

Musings

Well the time has come to give up my day job as Mr. Mom and step boldly back into the work force. As a physicist, astronomer, technology fire jumper, engineer, manager, educator, and futurist I have managed to stay gainfully employed for 25 years. I spent 13 years with the same corporation in a number of capacities (SAIC can be a really exciting place to work) and was then sold as part of a buyout package by our largest competitor. We were purchased because our competition could not compete. The logic being; if you cannot beat'm buy'm. We continued to be successful. Unfortunately Litton Data Systems was not. As Litton began to fade to black, I decided to take the plunge into the area of Silicon Valley start-ups. I am originally from Silicon Valley, and SAIC is structured like hundreds of start-ups under a single corporate umbrella, so it was all very familiar. I joined MAYAN Networks in 1999, just at the tail end of the boom. By the end of 2001, I had been in two additional companies (may MAYAN and Kestrel rest in peace). My wife and I traded places, and she went back to work full time while I stayed at home as Mr. Mom and continued to teach part time at West Valley College (I always teach somewhere). The opportunity to apply for a full time position at the college was on the horizon and it looked like a nice change of pace from the 200,000 miles a year and  80 hour work weeks of my past life. That opportunity sank along with the California State budget. As one opportunity fades, another appears and I was offered a position to teach AP Physics C at The Harker School. I am now building a new program, because, apparently, in our educational system, instructors who move on typically leave little or no evidence of their past efforts. If we want to make sweeping changes in education, that would be a good place to start.

Erratum: This is my 3^rd year at Harker. I have never worked with a more professional group of people. The defense industry could learn a great deal form Howard and Diana Nichols. In that past I have worked on projects that could have destroyed the world. Now I am working to save it: one-student-at-a-time. The Harker School is an amazing institution.

11/23/05 ern