Monday, July 14, 2008
A Brief History of the John & Pauline Colton family
My parents asked all their kids to write a family history with some emphasis on notable accomplishments, to help Lee Roderick who is writing a biography of my grandfather. I think they just wanted a few paragraphs, but this is what I came up with.
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A Brief History of the John & Pauline Colton family – written July 2008 by John S. Colton
To move quickly through the beginnings of my (John’s) life: I was born in St. Louis in 1970, then moved to Connecticut, moved to Maryland, moved to Austria, and then moved back to Maryland in 1981. I attended the American International School (A.I.S.) in Vienna, and Lakewood Elementary, Robert Frost Junior High, and Thomas S. Wootton High School in Maryland. While in Junior High my parents decided I should get a job, so I started delivering newspapers (the Washington Post) before school. At least they “put their money where their mouth was”, and one or both of them helped me out with the job very consistently over the next five years—even when it was before the early morning seminary class at the church and we had to get up at 5:15 am or so. I did very well in high school, graduating among the top in my class, taking 6 A.P. classes, and being active in band (playing trumpet), the math team, “It’s Academic” (a Jeopardy-like quiz bowl), and the annual Physics Olympics.
As a result of academic success, a good application essay, and some good interviews I earned a Presidential “Ezra Taft Benson” scholarship to BYU in 1988. That is BYU’s top academic scholarship: 4-years at 150% tuition. I like to call it my “foosball scholarship”, because during one of the evenings in the week-long scholarship competition a partner and I went undefeated in foosball (table soccer) for a couple of hours. When asked on the closing interview what the highlight of the week had been, I pointed to the evening of foosball fun. When asked what the low point had been, I said, “Waking up the next morning being unable to move my wrists!” I joke about that being the reason I got the scholarship, but I do think displaying a sense of humor in a somewhat competitive environment impressed the interviewers.
After one year of BYU, I left on an LDS church mission to Munich, Germany. I never actually served in Munich, but did spend 3-6 months in each of five cities around southern Germany: Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Offenburg, Erlangen, Freiburg, and Mannheim. In Mannheim I was called specifically to work with American military servicemen and their families; in the other places, I taught the gospel to Germans… and Africans, and Eastern Europeans, and other Americans. The mission was a life-changing event. I learned to be thankful for what I had. I learned to care about people—from all backgrounds. I learned how to work my tail off. I learned what the gospel was about, what the church was about, and I learned the difference between the two. I gained a deep testimony about the inspiration of church leaders in one area when I had a somewhat lazy senior companion who wanted to sit in our apartment more than we should have. I read about ten to twenty years of back issues of the Ensign magazine over the course of two months, and could see with 20-20 hindsight how inspired the counsel from church leaders had been.
Pauline and I met at BYU the week after I got off my mission; she remembers that I was still rubbing my eyes from the jetlag. Pauline was from Idaho; her parents had moved there when she was six. Before that she lived in California for six years and Utah for a few weeks (she was born in Provo). She moved to Idaho in first grade, mid-year, and remembers the second half of first grade in Idaho was a lot easier than the first half had been in California. Aside from an accident where (as a toddler) she fell through a closed window, Pauline led a fairly uneventful life. She worked at a number of jobs while in high school: receptionist for a Musak provider, assistant for an engineering group at Hewlett-Packard, house cleaner, babysitter, and so forth. She also graduated among the top in her high school class and won a scholarship to BYU (Trustee’s scholarship: 4 years, 100% tuition). She majored in statistics, and with my own major in physics we’ve decided it’s a good thing our children don’t have lisps.
We began dating during the Fall 1991 semester, about two months after we met, and we got engaged shortly after that. We were married on May 1, 1992. Pauline continued at BYU for one more year before graduating with her B.S. degree in Statistics; I graduated the year after that with B.S. degrees in Physics and Mathematics. Pauline worked for the BYU Financial Aid department during that final year.
After BYU, we moved to California where I started graduate school at U.C. Berkeley in Physics, in 1994. Leslie and Emily were born in Berkeley, in 1996 and 2000 respectively. At Berkeley I studied experimental solid state physics, with Peter Yu as my research advisor. Pauline worked for two years at two different companies in San Francisco (liking the second one, Technology Assessment Group, far more than the first), but after Leslie was born she decided to be a full-time mom. In Dec 2000 I graduated with my Ph.D. and we moved to Maryland. I was named a “National Academies/National Research Council research fellow”, which involved a 2-3 year post-doctoral research position at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Tom Kennedy was my research advisor there. After two and a half years in Maryland, we moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin where I got a job as a faculty member at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
At UW-La Crosse, I learned how to balance the teaching and research expectations of a faculty member, and was successful in both. I was awarded several external research grants totaling about $500,000; this was very unusual at a university like UW-L whose primary mission was teaching. One of the highlights of my teaching career there was when I was named a “Wisconsin Teaching Fellow”; this was a prestigious teaching award program funded by the University of Wisconsin system, and only about one individual per university in the system (13 universities) could be named a fellow each year. My department was also part of an even more prestigious award: the Regents Teaching Excellence Award. This was only awarded annually to a single department in the entire University of Wisconsin system. (Caveat: although I was part of the group that received the award, a lot of it was based on the progress the department had made in the years before I arrived.)
While in La Crosse, I joined the La Crosse Chamber Chorale, an excellent community chorus directed by Paul Rusterholz. We practiced weekly, and had concerts four or five times a year. It was a lot of fun, and in addition to letting me meet a lot of quality people from around town, it really helped increase my overall musicality. I was asked to be on the board of directors, and served as Vice President during my final year there. Pauline also found many ways to become involved in the community, such as by volunteering at North Woods Elementary school and by taking classes and workshops in watercolor painting. Leslie and Emily had a great experience in La Crosse as well and we were all a bit sad when the time to move came.
But the time did come: in Fall 2006 I was contacted by an acquaintance in BYU’s Physics Department. He told me that I should apply for a position they had open. After asking myself, “Is there any set of circumstances that would lead me to accept a job at BYU?”, I decided that there was and so I should apply. They liked my application well enough to invite me for an interview, and they liked my interview well enough to offer me a job. After a lot of thought and prayer, we decided to accept the job and move to Utah. Among the factors that helped make our decision were these: much closer to family, better students for me to teach, less of a teaching load (hopefully leading to a more balanced life), a bit of a pay raise, and a more stable university financial climate overall.
One thing about living in Utah is that we miss feeling needed to help the church run—whereas in many of our other situations our volunteer service in the church was indispensible, here we are much more just “part of the crowd”. Nevertheless, we do what we can to help out, even if it’s not quite on the same level as in other places. Here is a brief run-down on our church service: In California I served as the Ward Mission Leader and the Executive Secretary for many years. Pauline was in the Relief Society presidency for a time. In Maryland, I was the Elders Quorum President; Pauline was the Primary President, and later a counselor in the Young Women’s Presidency. In La Crosse I was the Ward Mission Leader again, and then a counselor in the Branch Presidency. I also got to play organ for the sacrament service fairly often, and I directed the ward choir. Pauline was the Sunday School Gospel Doctrine teacher, and also served for a time as the Primary music leader (which, perhaps surprisingly, she really loved). Here in Utah, I am now the Sunday School President and Pauline is the Relief Society Secretary.
As we tell people, “we’ve lived on both coasts and in the middle”, so we’ve done our fair share of moving around. We hope to break the trend, and be here in Utah for a long while.
___
A Brief History of the John & Pauline Colton family – written July 2008 by John S. Colton
To move quickly through the beginnings of my (John’s) life: I was born in St. Louis in 1970, then moved to Connecticut, moved to Maryland, moved to Austria, and then moved back to Maryland in 1981. I attended the American International School (A.I.S.) in Vienna, and Lakewood Elementary, Robert Frost Junior High, and Thomas S. Wootton High School in Maryland. While in Junior High my parents decided I should get a job, so I started delivering newspapers (the Washington Post) before school. At least they “put their money where their mouth was”, and one or both of them helped me out with the job very consistently over the next five years—even when it was before the early morning seminary class at the church and we had to get up at 5:15 am or so. I did very well in high school, graduating among the top in my class, taking 6 A.P. classes, and being active in band (playing trumpet), the math team, “It’s Academic” (a Jeopardy-like quiz bowl), and the annual Physics Olympics.
As a result of academic success, a good application essay, and some good interviews I earned a Presidential “Ezra Taft Benson” scholarship to BYU in 1988. That is BYU’s top academic scholarship: 4-years at 150% tuition. I like to call it my “foosball scholarship”, because during one of the evenings in the week-long scholarship competition a partner and I went undefeated in foosball (table soccer) for a couple of hours. When asked on the closing interview what the highlight of the week had been, I pointed to the evening of foosball fun. When asked what the low point had been, I said, “Waking up the next morning being unable to move my wrists!” I joke about that being the reason I got the scholarship, but I do think displaying a sense of humor in a somewhat competitive environment impressed the interviewers.
After one year of BYU, I left on an LDS church mission to Munich, Germany. I never actually served in Munich, but did spend 3-6 months in each of five cities around southern Germany: Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Offenburg, Erlangen, Freiburg, and Mannheim. In Mannheim I was called specifically to work with American military servicemen and their families; in the other places, I taught the gospel to Germans… and Africans, and Eastern Europeans, and other Americans. The mission was a life-changing event. I learned to be thankful for what I had. I learned to care about people—from all backgrounds. I learned how to work my tail off. I learned what the gospel was about, what the church was about, and I learned the difference between the two. I gained a deep testimony about the inspiration of church leaders in one area when I had a somewhat lazy senior companion who wanted to sit in our apartment more than we should have. I read about ten to twenty years of back issues of the Ensign magazine over the course of two months, and could see with 20-20 hindsight how inspired the counsel from church leaders had been.
Pauline and I met at BYU the week after I got off my mission; she remembers that I was still rubbing my eyes from the jetlag. Pauline was from Idaho; her parents had moved there when she was six. Before that she lived in California for six years and Utah for a few weeks (she was born in Provo). She moved to Idaho in first grade, mid-year, and remembers the second half of first grade in Idaho was a lot easier than the first half had been in California. Aside from an accident where (as a toddler) she fell through a closed window, Pauline led a fairly uneventful life. She worked at a number of jobs while in high school: receptionist for a Musak provider, assistant for an engineering group at Hewlett-Packard, house cleaner, babysitter, and so forth. She also graduated among the top in her high school class and won a scholarship to BYU (Trustee’s scholarship: 4 years, 100% tuition). She majored in statistics, and with my own major in physics we’ve decided it’s a good thing our children don’t have lisps.
We began dating during the Fall 1991 semester, about two months after we met, and we got engaged shortly after that. We were married on May 1, 1992. Pauline continued at BYU for one more year before graduating with her B.S. degree in Statistics; I graduated the year after that with B.S. degrees in Physics and Mathematics. Pauline worked for the BYU Financial Aid department during that final year.
After BYU, we moved to California where I started graduate school at U.C. Berkeley in Physics, in 1994. Leslie and Emily were born in Berkeley, in 1996 and 2000 respectively. At Berkeley I studied experimental solid state physics, with Peter Yu as my research advisor. Pauline worked for two years at two different companies in San Francisco (liking the second one, Technology Assessment Group, far more than the first), but after Leslie was born she decided to be a full-time mom. In Dec 2000 I graduated with my Ph.D. and we moved to Maryland. I was named a “National Academies/National Research Council research fellow”, which involved a 2-3 year post-doctoral research position at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Tom Kennedy was my research advisor there. After two and a half years in Maryland, we moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin where I got a job as a faculty member at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
At UW-La Crosse, I learned how to balance the teaching and research expectations of a faculty member, and was successful in both. I was awarded several external research grants totaling about $500,000; this was very unusual at a university like UW-L whose primary mission was teaching. One of the highlights of my teaching career there was when I was named a “Wisconsin Teaching Fellow”; this was a prestigious teaching award program funded by the University of Wisconsin system, and only about one individual per university in the system (13 universities) could be named a fellow each year. My department was also part of an even more prestigious award: the Regents Teaching Excellence Award. This was only awarded annually to a single department in the entire University of Wisconsin system. (Caveat: although I was part of the group that received the award, a lot of it was based on the progress the department had made in the years before I arrived.)
While in La Crosse, I joined the La Crosse Chamber Chorale, an excellent community chorus directed by Paul Rusterholz. We practiced weekly, and had concerts four or five times a year. It was a lot of fun, and in addition to letting me meet a lot of quality people from around town, it really helped increase my overall musicality. I was asked to be on the board of directors, and served as Vice President during my final year there. Pauline also found many ways to become involved in the community, such as by volunteering at North Woods Elementary school and by taking classes and workshops in watercolor painting. Leslie and Emily had a great experience in La Crosse as well and we were all a bit sad when the time to move came.
But the time did come: in Fall 2006 I was contacted by an acquaintance in BYU’s Physics Department. He told me that I should apply for a position they had open. After asking myself, “Is there any set of circumstances that would lead me to accept a job at BYU?”, I decided that there was and so I should apply. They liked my application well enough to invite me for an interview, and they liked my interview well enough to offer me a job. After a lot of thought and prayer, we decided to accept the job and move to Utah. Among the factors that helped make our decision were these: much closer to family, better students for me to teach, less of a teaching load (hopefully leading to a more balanced life), a bit of a pay raise, and a more stable university financial climate overall.
One thing about living in Utah is that we miss feeling needed to help the church run—whereas in many of our other situations our volunteer service in the church was indispensible, here we are much more just “part of the crowd”. Nevertheless, we do what we can to help out, even if it’s not quite on the same level as in other places. Here is a brief run-down on our church service: In California I served as the Ward Mission Leader and the Executive Secretary for many years. Pauline was in the Relief Society presidency for a time. In Maryland, I was the Elders Quorum President; Pauline was the Primary President, and later a counselor in the Young Women’s Presidency. In La Crosse I was the Ward Mission Leader again, and then a counselor in the Branch Presidency. I also got to play organ for the sacrament service fairly often, and I directed the ward choir. Pauline was the Sunday School Gospel Doctrine teacher, and also served for a time as the Primary music leader (which, perhaps surprisingly, she really loved). Here in Utah, I am now the Sunday School President and Pauline is the Relief Society Secretary.
As we tell people, “we’ve lived on both coasts and in the middle”, so we’ve done our fair share of moving around. We hope to break the trend, and be here in Utah for a long while.
# posted by John Colton @ 11:02 PM 
