I come to Evergreen with a sense of hope and excitement --Hope that here I can realize the goal of making science some- thing other than an abstract discipline; excitement that a school exists where I can do something other than regurgitate verbally for 500 sleeping students the concepts and facts that a better person than I has spent five years putting into an excellent text, and that I am at that school.

At Evergreen one of the key words is inter-disciplinary". That means that one is crossing boundary lines that should not have been created in the first place because they don't exist. I fit that description twice over. Thus here I can doubly celebrate the demise of those nonexistent barriers.

My training has been in both physics (as an undergraduate) and biology (in graduate school). My particular research interest is in the details of photosynthesis --a mixture of physical, chemical and biological questing into the stuff that makes plants green. I've also recently had published what I feel is a successful learning program in thermodynamics for students of biology.

Secondly, in the past few years I have become increasingly concerned about the future of our society and the role of science in determining that future. Most scientists have not related their work in the laboratory to the crises we face; there is no doubt in my mind that this must change if we are to

have much of a future at all. The problem is, of course, a two-way street: scientists need a better understanding of society and we all need a better under understanding of how science works and what its potentials, limitations and responsibilities are. Perhaps here at Evergreen we actually can relate science and the real world --the world of our individual lives and not just the world (is it real?) of scientific observation.

My wife and I also celebrate our return to the Pacific Coast and the opportunity to share it with our eastern-born children. You can't really appreciate our evergreen forests until you have endured the ordeal of the American east and midwest. For us, as it must be for many others, our move to Olympia and Evergreen is a rebirth --with prospects of joy (ang suffering) as we experience the new growth which it must bring.