Yiannis (John) Fotopoulos ’76

Student

When I first met Dr.Serdengecti in his office, as a freshman at HMC, I remembered he related to me that he was of Turkish origin and he had been born in a Greek city named Kavala, 100 miles east of my hometown. More than twenty years later, I was visiting HMC with my wife, Eugenia, who has been born and raised in Kavala too. We took the opportunity to visit Dr.Serdengecti in his office and say hello. We both remember him as a very friendly and polite man. Long live his memory!

Aki Nakamura ’66

My counselor in picking up classes for my 1 year stay as a special student in HMC

I was met by Sedat on my first day in HMC in 1965 summer. At that time I was a special student to enrole in HMC for a year from Japan, when Yen was still 360 yen to a dollar. I was on a scholarship. He guided me to engineering courses and some of liberal arts classes around Clairmont colleges , Scripps and CMC at that time. Of course I took Systems Engineering , which served my career in Engineering for my entire life. I also met Mrs.Serdengecti in his room when we were talking about the results of my first semester tests.
It was a long time ago, and yet I remember him clearly as if it was yesterday. Thank you Sedat for your fine guidance which I followed after I returned to the U. of Tokyo for continuing the Mechanical Engineering career afterwards.

Pat Barrett '66 ’66

Student

As others have said, Dr. Serdengecti’s classes were probably the hardest I had at Mudd and the ones I spent the most time studying for. My room mate and I figured we spent at least 20 hours a week just on the Systems problem sets. I was rewarded for all the rigor in his classes when I got to MIT for a masters and was required to take more systems courses. While they may not have been a breeze, I was easily able to handle them based on what I had learned in Dr. Serdengecti’s classes.

In addition to his great teaching ability, he really cared about the students and about the honor code. I was on the Judiciary Board when a case came up regarding a student in one of his classes. He was a meticulous and conscientious in presenting his understanding of the case as he was in teaching La Place transforms.

He was a real treasure and helped make the Cololege what it is today.

Tom Helliwell

Friend and Colleague

I met Sedat in the fall of 1962, shortly after the beginning of my first year at HMC. I was immediately impressed with his intellect, warmth, and careful, clear way of speaking. That year I taught a full set of courses at HMC and was still finishing my PhD thesis at Caltech, commuting back and forth, so was working like crazy. Then in the spring of that academic year my oral thesis defense was scheduled for the early afternoon on a day when I was supposed to teach our junior-level physics course in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics in the morning. That was too much to contemplate for one day, so I asked Sedat if he would be a guest lecturer. He graciously agreed.
On the appointed morning i was free to think about my thesis, but I felt relaxed enough go to the classroom and sit in the back while Sedat lectured. I still remember that his lecture was embarrassingly good, a model of organization, clarity, and insightfulness. And later that day I was able to defend my thesis and return to Claremont with a degree, a grateful heart that
Sedat had helped me so well, and a better appreciation of how good a lecture can be.

Paul Kollar ’67

Engineering major and student of his Systems courses

He was the most demanding of all my professors and exposed me to the most challenging concepts and material. It was an honor to have learned from him. Please accept my condolences to his family and to the Mudd community.

Somchai Yantapanit ’75

Student

Dr. Serdengecti was my favourite teacher even though I had the hardest time earning good grades from several courses that he taught. His slow and orderly way of presenting the difficult materials were the method that I use in my later life teaching my children. Many of us had fond memories of him.

Stephen Garfield ’66

Student

I took two semesters of Dr. Serdengecti’s legendary Systems Engineering course in the early 1960’s. Flat out it tied for the toughest course I ever took at HMC with Dr. William “Snowman” Sly’s Organic Chemistry ordeal. Both semesters I participated in Dr. Serdengecti’s marathon of academic pain, during which I studied as hard as I ever have, before or since, I was awarded a final grade of “D” for my efforts. After both semesters I met with him in his office, expressing with much trepidation that I really believed I desired better. Both semesters, he leaned back, puffed on his pipe, closed his eyes for a few moments and said, looking me straight in the eyes, “You know, I agree.” And he changed both grades to a “B”. That unbelievable turn of events was even memorialized in my senior year yearbook. In a lot of ways, that sequence was a life changing event for me, and one I’ve never forgotten. Sedat was a brilliant scholar, a demanding teacher, and one of the most honorable men I’ve ever met. Above all else he was a man of integrity, and we should all aspire to meet his standards of excellence.

Dick Brown ’65

Student

What a great teacher! In our Physics class he always filled AT LEAST 6 boards with his small writing and it all, with his explanation, made sense. My hand cramps up just thinking about how fast we had to write to keep up with him! I learned so much and have nothing but find memories of one of HMC’s greatest profs of all time.

Tefkros Symeonides ’77

I took Advanced Programming with Dr Serdengecti in my 5th year in 1978! It was an enlightening and exciting journey through LISP, SNOBOL, recursive techniques … Unforgettable and precious! I remember him as a thoughtful, quiet and kind man, always challenging us into learning! I am forever grateful to him for the defining learning experience that fostered my passion for elegance in the art of programming.

Leonard Vance ’83

Student

I took systems engineering from Sedat in 1981. At this point in time his reputation was (lets be honest) fearsome. He flunked 40% of the previous year’s class, with a significant fraction of them receiving zeroes on all three of their midterms. His response to this was to give us tests every week instead of waiting for the 3 convenient midterm dates.

I had my share of zeroes on those weekly tests – which he ran in the first 20 minutes of his lecture every week.

It was his habit to go back through this test problem and solve it for us on the board after we were done. One week, he spent the entire rest of the period (50 minutes) to complete the problem while skipping all the (not inconsiderable) algebra. It occurred to me that expecting us to complete a problem in 20 minutes which he took 50 minutes to solve on the board, skipping all the algebra, was unfair, and I raised my hand and politely called him on this. His response was tart and direct, something like: “It takes a lot more time to explain a problem than to solve it, and you should have been able to do this in the time allotted.”

This was not a high point in our relationship.

I finished that first semester with a C-, but I signed immediately up for his next class, because, you see, he was a damned good teacher.

At the time, I reasoned that the knowledge was more important than the grade, and 30 years on, that feeling has only strengthened. When I compare my academic strengths in control systems to my capabilities in RF wave propagation (which I got an A in). I’m grateful to myself for taking his class back in 1981.

A year later, I was assigned to my senior clinic project, and can you guess who ends up as our advisor? I was the team lead, and this did not go well – at first. As the year went on, however, he pushed me, and I began to discover that I was actually good at both making things work, and leading a team. I saw a different side to him. He still pushed hard, with uncompromising standards, but also gave personable encouragement when things went well. When the time came, he wrote the recommendation that got me my job at Hughes Aircraft. I’m still here 31 years later, managing programs to build satellites.

There was one more significant chapter to the story yet to come. A year into my tenure at Hughes, I was told that I needed a masters degree if I really wanted to succeed in the company. It was August, two weeks before the beginning of the semester, so I called Sedat to see if I could apply for the following year of the Engineering master’s degree program. He said “Absolutely, but wouldn’t you rather do it this year?”

Two weeks later I was back in class, and eight months after that I had my masters degree. Just like that. I would also like to share that I got an A in his systems optimization class that year, and I still use those techniques today.

Over the years, I dropped by irregularly to share with him the melange of interesting problems which we were working on. He delighted in this, and I think I was able to give him that pleasure in seeing one of his students succeed. I am very sorry to say that I missed him last November when I was on campus giving a lecture for the engineering seminar.

Thank you Sedat, you were the best teacher I ever had.

Leonard Vance