Campfire Celebrates Professor's 35 Years Teaching

Fred Provenza said he tried to incorporate not just the scholarly but also the free-thinking voices in the field and many students around the campfire laughed as they remembered guest speaker like John “The F-Bomb Guy.”

“He was nearly a bum off the street,” said Provenza, a recently retired USU professor.

Roughly 30 people, mostly former students of Provenza, were huddling from the cold around the campfire and roasting marshmallows on metal hangers for an event that took place Thursday at Malibu Campground in Logan Canyon as part of Natural Resources Week.

“His ability to teach and be compassionate blew my mind,” John Rentschler, Associated Students of Utah State University senator for the College of Natural Resources, said of his former professor Provenza. Rentschler helped plan the campfire discussion and said there was no theme other than what can happen.

The students’ conversation often turned to their experience in his managing dynamic ecological systems class, in which Provenza blended varied elements from science to religion in creating a setting of open discussion.

“If you really want a good class everyone should be being challenged, the professor and the students,” Provenza said.

Since his retirement last year, after 35 years at USU, Provenza said he has been working quarter-time helping graduate students with their research on animal behavior.

“He’s done amazing research at this university,” Rentschler said.

Michael Butkus, an academic adviser in the College of Natural Resources who helped organize the event, introduced Provenza at the fire. Butkus joked that when people ask about who he’d like to be stranded on an island with, instead of common answers like Albert Einstein or Paula Abdul he thinks of Fred Provenza.

“We’re very happy to have him here,” Butkus said.

Provenza said he hadn’t planned out his comments for the evening but spoke about retiring from teaching and how it is difficult to “walk away” from something that he’s loved doing for so long.

“It’s a lot of emotion,” Provenza said, “some I didn’t anticipate.”

Provenza said the last 35 years “went in a blink” and spoke of the research that he had done at the university and his experiences with his students, many of whom were present.

“It’s better to sing one song too few than one song too many,” Provenza said.

Topics of discussion extended to challenging one’s fears, perspective, the nature of academics and science, all of which ultimately cycled back to Provenza.

“When you study some of the great scientific advances, what people did was to break out of the bubble that science (was) in,” Provenza said.

Provenza challenged the people present to keep an open mind and look outside of their comfort zones in the academic world, stressing his concerns about the nature of modern academics such as less hands-on research and distance between students and professors.

“All the boundaries we create are arbitrary,” Provenza said.

– b.c.wood@aggiemail.usu.edu