Dr. Peter Clancy has been a part of the IMSA community for ten years. Not only did he positively influence the students, but he was also a kind, reliable, genuine, and pun-loving person with all of his colleagues. Dr. Don Dosch shared that at the very start of Dr. Clancy\u2019s IMSA career, he \u201cinterviewed here for a physics position. But, you know, during an interview you\u2019re being super careful, you\u2019re looking for behaviors. Immediately I could tell that he was going to be approachable, supportive, and challenging of students. And, I must say that my first impressions really never changed with time. You know, sometimes during an interview people want to give you their best impression. He was sincere, he was the person that we saw in the interview.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Dr. Clancy truly had a personality that everyone could look up to. Dr. Mark Carlson expressed: \u201cI consider myself privileged to share an office with him. We were just on the same wavelength. There was never any misunderstanding between us, so it made working together really easy. Spending nine years together in an office, I can never remember one harsh word ever uttered between us, or him towards anyone or anything. And, he was a good example on many fronts. He never got angry, he never was short with me or students. I think he was a remarkable model, a person you would like to emulate in terms of his patience, his willingness to help, his humility. I mean, there were so many good qualities that I felt it was very good for the students to see this person, because we\u2019re surrounded by so many bad examples that don\u2019t necessarily seem to have ramifications, but he modeled good behavior in so many ways.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Dr. Peter Dong added that <\/span>\u201cDr. Clancy was always out of the spotlight. He wasn\u2019t trying to make waves, wasn\u2019t trying to make a name for himself. And, especially towards the end, he was getting very sick. He still came very faithfully, came to teach his classes, to do his work just as always, and he only missed class when he had to be physically gone at a doctor\u2019s appointment or the hospital. One time, he had to check into the hospital for a few days, and then as soon as he came out he came right back to work. You know, he really liked it here, he really enjoyed his job, but it was also a duty, and he took it very seriously. You know, this job is not high-paying. He has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering; he could do a lot of other things. He wasn\u2019t getting even recognition, particularly, because while a lot of people knew him as a teacher, he wasn\u2019t on the brochure. He was just here doing his job, and doing it well. That\u2019s something I think we underrate sometimes. We talk about innovation, disruption, big changes, and that\u2019s all fine, but to recognize the value in coming and doing a job you enjoy, and to do it well, and to not need anything else besides that; I feel like that\u2019s a lesson to learn.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Another aspect of his amazing personality was his sly sense of humor. When asked about a fondest memory of Dr. Clancy, Dr. Carlson stated that \u201cWe had put up some pictures of remarkable scientists, and there was a picture of this person who was responsible for a theory on symmetry relating symmetry to physical forces, and so this person was all about high symmetry and he said \u2018You ever noticed how that person wears a monocle?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Dr. Dong shared one of his favorite memories of Dr. Clancy as well, and of course, it involved one of his jokes: <\/span>\u201cThis is hard to explain, because it\u2019s really geeky, but Dr. Clancy really liked puns and he would go out of his way to work them in. One time, when I first started teaching Computational Science, I was trying out a lot of things for the first time that I\u2019d never done, and one of the things I tried was the thermodynamic model of water. So I had simulated molecules going around, and I was trying to make it so you heat it up, and when you heat it up sufficiently, it would start to boil, so the water molecules would evaporate off the top. I was trying to figure that out, but it wasn\u2019t working. Dr. Clancy had studied chemical engineering, so I was asking him for suggestions. A day or two later, he came and he found me, and he said, \u2018I figured out the problem.\u2019 He said \u2018I assume your program runs a loop and at every time increment it checks to see if the water is boiling.\u2019 And I said, \u2018Yeah, I guess I\u2019m doing that.\u2019 He said, \u2018You must keep the time increment very short.\u2019 I said, \u2018Yeah, I do.\u2019 And he said, ‘Well, there\u2019s your problem, then. A watched pot never boils.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n From beginning to end, he was always someone to look up to, someone to learn from, both in and out of the classroom. Though he may not have been trying to make a name for himself, he definitely left a legacy with us here at IMSA. We are all grateful that Dr. Clancy chose to share a part of his life with us and be a part of our own little community. He will be dearly missed.<\/span><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Alana Depaz Dr. Peter Clancy has been a part of the IMSA community for ten years. Not only did he positively influence the students, but he was also a kind, reliable, genuine, and pun-loving person with all of his colleagues. Dr. Don Dosch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imsa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/hadron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}