The Leonard Fund

I will never complain about free food. I also love hanging out with my professors and just chatting idly about life, science, and random things. Clearly, Mr. and Mrs. Mark G. Leonard P ’93 were onto something when they established the Leonard fund, a pool of money basically dedicated to students who want to eat food with their professors. This week, we’re having dinner with professor Theresa Lynn at a restaurant which we haven’t agreed upon. Professor Lynn, an experimental physicist, is teaching Physics 84: Quantum Information and Physics 134: Optics Lab this semester; her research is in quantum optics and quantum computing. Anyhow, scheduling nine people to meet for two hours suddenly becomes a lot easier when there’s good food and hanging out with Prof Lynn involved.

I am a huge fan of simply hanging out with professors outside class–they always have valuable insight in many areas, cool mathematical derivations to show you, or just interesting things to say. Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had with my professors aren’t held during a structured lecture, but rather immediately afterward or during their office hours. Though lectures classes usually engaging and occasionally awe-inspiring, this is one facet of Harvey Mudd’s philosophy that I benefit from intellectually and personally on a regular basis. With Professor Lynn we discussed all manner of light and weighty topics including summer, work-life balance, the air quality in Southern California over the years, and the state of the College and the Core Curriculum, over a weighty dinner at Aruffo’s Italian Cuisine in the village.

Read more information about the Leonard fund.

On a random note, did you know that the operator

translates a function by one unit to the right?