The Fireside Chats are a series of conversations and remembrances with present and retired faculty. The presenters will reflect on their time at D’Youville College, their colleagues and students—past and present, the changes they have witnessed at the college and their vision of D’Youville College for the future.

Math and Natural Sciences department faculty member Ted Hart and former faculty member Jerome Kresse are the speakers for this event.

Refreshments to follow.

Fireside Chat flyer

Speaker Biographies

D. Edward Hart, Ph.D. Dr Hart is a professor of Biology, specializing in Intro to Biology, Physiology, and Human Gross Anatomy. For several years, he served as chairman of the Department of Math and Natural Sciences. In the past several years, he has worked with Upstate New York Transplant Services as a tissue recovery technician. Dr. Hart has been at D’Youville for 30 years and does not foresee retirement for several more yet!

Jerome Kresse, Ph.D. Dr. Kresse, better known as Jerry, retired from D’Youville in the year 2000 after thirty-four years of service as assistant professor, associate professor and full professor of chemistry. Liked and appreciated by his students, Dr. Kresse fully enjoyed teaching and opening young minds to the intricacies of organic chemistry. Over the years he has chaired the Department of Chemistry, and the Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, while working also as president of the AAUP, and as a member of diverse college committees including the Danforth. Father of three sons and two daughters, he has also done his share of commitment to the Cub Scouts, and Little League Baseball as well as to the parish council in his home parish. Travel to Spain, Egypt, Poland, Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland has rounded out the finely balanced and humane life of this professor whose greatest desire in teaching was to hone in his students the ability to make fine distinctions that would always enable them throughout life to distinguish real science from the fake. The college community keenly felt his loss when he retired from teaching in the year 2000.

Bob Wagner, Ph.D. Dr. Wagner joined the mathematics faculty in the fall semester of 1968. Early in his career, he was interested in the shared governance and functions of the college. He served on the committee on faculty which dealt with everything from curriculum to dining room policies in the years before faculty council was in place. In the mid-1970s, Dr. Wagner became the second president of the DYC AAUP and presided over the union for its ratification. He went on to chair the division of mathematics and natural science and was appointed acting dean of faculty in 1981. Dr. Wagner retired in 2001.