Dean Athans
is a native Californian, from Sacramento. His
grandparents, immigrants from Greece, settled their families in
Sacramento in the early 1900’s. They worked for the Southern Pacific
Railroad and established businesses in Sacramento and its surrounding
towns. His parents, now retired from government civil service and the
McClatchy Newspaper chain, provided him and his sister an excellent home
environment. Their curiosity was constantly encouraged, education was
sought after, and challenge was respected as part of life and learning.
He
remembers, from his junior high school years, the Russian launch of
Sputnik before the U.S. launched its first satellite during the
International Geophysical Year (“IGY”), bomb shelters, air raid
sirens and drills, and even when Elvis really was alive! Dean had an
ability and did well in math and science in junior high, and entered “Sac
High” soon after the launch of Sputnik.
He
remembers the extra laboratory equipment and funding that the Kennedy
administration quickly gave to schools to improve the U.S.’s position
in math and the sciences to win the “space race.” His high school of
3000 students offered college preparatory math, physics and chemistry
most periods of the day.
Dean
was accepted and entered MIT after graduating high school, where he
majored in physics. The cold Boston winters were a big change from
Sacramento’s, but the excitement of living in a big city provided
professional, social and cultural events that weren’t available at
home. During the summers he returned to his home town where he worked in
civil service as a clerk-typist, and then as a materials laboratory
technician, for McClellan Air Force Base and eventually Aerojet General
Corporation.
He
graduated in four years, longing for a more survivable winter climate.
During some of his holiday flights between school and home, travel
connections were via Los Angeles. Experiencing seventy degree Christmas
season temperatures, and seeing open top convertibles driving around LAX
convinced him that it might be worthwhile to look into graduate school
in the Los Angeles area!
Dean
was accepted and entered USC—as a Mechanical Engineering major—for
his Master’s, and later his Doctorate, degree. The change from physics
to mechanical engineering required little more than a semester’s worth
of work, some of it applicable to his graduate degree. Soon after
starting USC, his professor and mentor, Martin Siegel, invited him to
apply for an engineering position at a small company, Astro Reliability
Corporation, that specialized in failure prediction and analysis. Marty
Siegel had been consulting there and encouraged several of his students
to seek employment with the company.
The
experience was wonderful. He was applying techniques learned just days
earlier in the classroom to all sizes and varieties of military projects
that the company was contracted to analyze. These ranged from specifying
failure modes of small, hand-held compasses to developing mission and
failure modes of large amphibious troop transports that steered in
normal two-wheel, four-wheel parallel, and four-wheel crab modes. He
remembers working in secret on failure modes of classified army night
vision devices while John Wayne, in the “Green Berets,” was using
them on-screen! He earned his Master’s in two years and was asked to
teach part-time in the Mechanical Engineering Department at USC.
During
this time, he and Tina Stringos, a teacher, met and started dating, and
were married shortly after. By the mid 1970’s their family included
two sons and they had moved to Monrovia. All the while teaching
part-time, his full-time work included ITT Gilfillan and later, as a
Research Mechanical Engineer, the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory in
Port Hueneme. While working at NCEL he earned his state Professional
Engineer’s license. Dean took his first full-time teaching position at
Cal Poly, Pomona, and earned his Ph.D. soon thereafter.
The
demands of raising a family and holding a full-time teaching position
required him to cut back on his industry workload, and he joined the
Instrumentation Section of JPL as a part-time academic employee and
Member of the Technical Staff in 1975. There he worked on many projects
over a period of twenty years, which included “earth bound” as well
as space projects.
In
1979 Dean became a faculty member of East Los Angeles College’s
Engineering Department, becoming its chairman by 1983. He followed the
chairmanship of Eli Sandler, who had greatly increased the department’s
offerings and enrollments. As chairman, Dean headed a group of six
engineering faculty in offering a complete lower division curriculum to
about 450 engineering students. The faculty remained current in their
fields through professional involvement and consulting in their areas of
engineering expertise. As a representative of ELAC, Dean became heavily
involved in the statewide Engineering Liaison Committee, and served as
its chairman in 1994-5, and also as its Community College Segment
chairman in 1984-5. Here at the campus he started the department’s ELAC
Engineering Newsletter soon after becoming department chairman, and
it is still published today, 14 years since its first issue.
His
honors include membership in Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society,
and Tau Beta Pi, the Engineering Honor Society; and awards from the
American Society for Engineering Education as Outstanding
Community College Educator of the Year, East Los Angeles College’s
League for Innovation for Innovator
of the Year, and several awards for East Los Angeles College’s Dia del Maestro for outstanding teaching.
Dean
was active in many campus and departmental committees, and was asked to
consider taking an interim position as a Dean of Academic Affairs in
January 1999. He applied and within a year he interviewed for and was
accepted in the full-time Dean’s position.
The
change for “Dean Dean” has been significant. From the realm of
equations, cause and effect, known properties, and predictable
responses, he now spends much of his time with people and their
problems. The challenge of tactfully exploring faculty interactions and
resolving disagreements has forced him to become a much better observer
and listener. His technical background still serves him well however as
he has organized various processes and procedures. As Curriculum Dean he
has participated in prerequisite validation, curriculum streamlining,
and creation of a campus course outline database.
Dean
continues to teach a course for the Engineering Department, alternating
between Statics and Engineering Programming each semester. The pleasure
he gains from students and the classroom environment is a constant
reminder of the foundation on which the community college system is
built.
In
their spare time, Tina and Dean, who are both in their fourth decade of
teaching, enjoy travel, fine cuisine, music, photography, and activities
around Los Angeles. Their sons include Peter, a mechanical engineer who
works for Disneyland’s Scientific Systems, and Ted, a Financial
Advisor for American Express. This past summer there was a wedding in
the family, of Ted to Jenny Zahorchak. Their “new daughter” works
for Ingram Micro, a large supplier of computers to industry. Their
children live in the Orange County area.
Dean
and Tina hope to retire within the next seven years, and travel is at
the top of their wish list!
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