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Fred Lynn Retires After 18 Years of Service

July 11, 2007

Fred Lynn, GSSM's Vice President of Academic Affairs, officially retired in June after nearly two decades on the job.

Arriving at GSSM in 1989 following 20 years of employment with the United States Navy, Lynn served as GSSM's VP for Academic Affairs; interim president in 2000-01; and taught one mathematics course each spring.

Lynn's retirement plans include traveling with his wife, Joni, to such places as Australia and Europe.

Lynn's successor is Dr. Hemant Pendharkar, current Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Worcester State College in Massachusetts. Pendharkar will serve as the new VP of Academic Affairs beginning July 20.

Share your favorite memories of Fred Lynn by emailing Jacqulyne Pouncey at the GSSM Foundation.


I remember all the photos of sail boats that Mr. Lynn kept in his office.  I think he must have been involved with the sailing at Annapolis when he was there.  Mr. Lynn also was the man that presented me with the Governor's School President's Scholarship to the University of South Carolina.  The presentation was made in front of all the students in the Coker cafeteria during the senior banquet.  I had no idea that the scholarship was being awarded to me and was just happy to have the twice baked potatoes in front of me on the dinner plate.  I wasn't even paying attention until I heard him call my name and everyone started clapping.  It was a great moment and I attribute my receiving that scholarship to Mr. Lynn.
-John Brooks, GSSM Class of 2001


I'll never forget my semester of calculus that Mr. Lynn taught as a sub for Art Squilante when he left GSSM.  It was one of the funnest (and funniest) math classes I ever had the privilege of taking.  "Sine Squiggly over Sine Squiggly"
-Martin Caver, GSSM Class of 2000

 


My favorite memory of Mr. Lynn was actually after I had graduated.  While at GSSM, I had Mr. Lynn for only one semester of calculus.  When I arrived at Furman I did not test into calculus.  It was recommended that I take pre-calculus AGAIN!  I didn't want to do this and felt that I had such a fresh understanding of calculus that I was ready to dive in.  Against my advisor's recommendation, I took calculus.

About half way through the semester we started learning about something I hadn't done before.  I called Mr. Lynn (in those days email wasn't that easy to use!) and asked him if this concept was something that he had covered.  He explained that we hadn't gotten to that concept but that it was fairly simple.  He spent about 15 minutes explaining the concept in terms of things we had covered.

I finished that semester with an A in calculus.  I later found out from my advisor that every person that had ever gone into calculus against the tests recommendation had gotten a D or had to withdraw from the class.  I credit Mr. Lynn's strong teaching to my success!
-Donna-Leigh (Eichor) Harmon, GSSM Class of 1992


I want to extend my congratulations to Mr. Lynn, along with my heartfelt thanks.  I only had him for two classes (an interim and a statistics class) in 1991, but I thoroughly enjoyed both of them.  Statistics was never my favorite mathematical subject, but I will always remember, and it has already been 16 years, how Mr. Lynn tried to make it more interesting to us by using naval IQ examples as well as David Robinson's height.   I did get my degree in mathematics, and I still count his class as one of my favorites in my course of study.   And, whenever I watch basketball and hear how one of the players is over 7' tall, I think of Mr. Lynn and the probability of such a thing!  Teachers like him allow students to enjoy the subject at hand and want to learn more about it. Please send my regards to him and wish him a wonderful and happy retirement!
-Deborah Volk, GSSM Class of 1991


These aren't really stories, just things I remember about his math class:
 
We affectionately referred to it as remedial math since it was a course designed to bring those of us with less than stellar math education up to speed with everyone else. 
 
Fred usually scurried in with a cup of coffee and big smile.  We talked a lot about "kissing" the x-axis and the word asymptote was always emphasized.
 
He wouldn't teach us the "shortcuts" to deriving equations until we could all completely master the long handed version and conceptually understood what we were trying to solve. 
 
When I took a pretest in college calculus, I was the only person who got all the questions right because they were all concepts of calculus questions instead of math problems and the professor was very impressed that someone had bothered to teach me the concepts instead of the "shortcuts" to the answers.  The idea that mastery of the fundamental concepts is more important that "getting the right answer" has stayed with me to this day and has been invaluable along my educational road.  Thanks, Mr. Lynn!
-Dr. Ty Coleman, GSSM Class of 1992