Today, Lorena and I are meeting Troy and Youngin for lunch in downtown Lincoln. This is probably my last day of school, ever. It has been an incredible amount of work, but every minute was worth it. Part of this had to do with me wanting to get a PhD, but honestly, the best part was the people with whom I worked. My committee consisted of 100% people of good will. My buddy John S. Started in the same program about halfway through my program and it has always been a joy to work with him. I’m going to enjoy continuing to volunteer with Troy, but it kind of won’t be the same. I just wish there was a way to adequately thank everyone involved.
Lorena and I drove up from Texas to Lincoln Nebraska today for my graduation. It was a really nice drive that we took pretty slow, stopping to eat whenever we wanted. I’m getting a little nostalgic about all of the schooling at this point. This really is the last time I’m going to do something like this. I’m glad I did it, it gave me great joy.
It is starting to pile higher and deeper now. I am now in the registry of earned doctorates kept by the NSF, NIH, and others. This is certainly not the diploma, but it says that I am officially complete. The actual point at which I “earned” the PhD as far as I can understand was June 8, 2023 when I was still on 67 years old.
Lorena got out my gown to make sure everything was as it should be. We are heading up toward Nebraska tomorrow, first to pick up the Kelly and Christian in Omaha on Thursday afternoon, then over to Lincoln for the night to be ready for the graduation on Friday. We were planning to make the whole drive from Texas to Omaha on Thursday, but decided we wanted to do this at a more reasonable pace so are leaving after the Fort Worth morning rush hour traffic to head out. I have to admit the cape and gown do look very cool. I am really looking forward to not only the graduation, but the festivities, too.
One little downside that showed up last week is that University of Nebraska–Lincoln is no longer going to provide lifetime email addresses for their graduates. That would not be such a big deal, but two of the professors on my committee and I are planning a fairly large research project to continue my work and it would have been nice to be able to do that without changing emails. I know that is a very small pinch point, but I would have enjoyed keeping my old email address. God willing, I will talk more about this new project that just extends my doctoral research. I will be pursuing this as a volunteer as long as I am able and there is fruitful work to do.
Lorena pulled out Christian’s PhD cap gown so we can take it along with us to Lincoln for my Graduation. We want to get a picture of he and I when I graduate. He only beat me to a PhD by 44 years based on age and 11 years by absolute date. AND, no question, his PhD is much more impressive than mine and he actually contributed greatly to my research and was a contributing author on both papers we published. He is a great son to me.
I thought the following table was pretty interesting. I created it in November 2020 after I had been in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Ph.D. program for about a year. I did not have my courses approved by my committee yet, but I was trying to make a guess at how long it would take me to get through, how to get the credits all in and finish in a reasonable time. I was really not trying to go fast, but not slow either. There was a trade-off between the money Troy would have to come up with (shorter is better) and sticking around in the program as long as possible to move Troy’s research program forward. It is kind of amazing how good was my guess. The part that I did not really get so right was the amount of work it would be to write the required articles and the dissertation. Pretty much everything extra got put on hold for four years, including health stuff like eating right and exercise. There was no excuse for that, but I got through the program fine, Gracias a Dios.
A response to the question Is it Wrong to Retire by William Lane Craig on his website Reasonable Faith really resonated with me. It is something I have been thinking about for quite awhile now. I started a Ph.D. program at University of Nebraska–Lincoln four years ago when I was 63 years old with the idea that I would finish it as a retirement project. That did not happen. I am now 68 years old, still working and will be walking the commencement at UNL next Friday. In addition to that, I have a commitment, God willing, to work until I am at least 70 at my current day job. In my current mindset, the only thing that would prevent me from continuing in that position after 70 is if I am not able. When I do quit that job, I hope I am able to continue helping my professor, Troy as a volunteer as long as I am able.
With Thanksgiving and our first Sunday morning of even numbered months worship meeting that we host at our home behind us, we are in a week of calm before we start traveling, entertaining, and celebrating here in Texas for part of Christmas and New Year’s, in Washington, D.C. for part of Christmas, and at University of Nebraska–Lincoln for my graduation. That really good part of all this is that we get to spend most of it with Kelly and Christian. They are flying out to Lincoln for the graduation–Lorena and I will drive up before the graduation to pick them up at the Omaha airport. We have Honest Abe’s and one of the Omaha’s spectacular steak houses on the agenda along with the graduation celebrations. Then we head back to Texas before flying to Washington, D.C. for a few days for Christmas. When we return home, Lorena and I plan to go to Istanbul sometime before the New Year to try out a restaurant Ralph, Lorena, and I stopped at for a drink during Ralph’s visit for Thanksgiving.
Now that I am about to graduate, my Ph.D. adviser, Troy, and I have identified a volunteer research project on which I can collaborate. Troy’s GRIME Lab is working with collaborators in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America to develop methods for the crowd sourcing of hydrologically interesting water scene images. With this project, the biggest problem is figuring out how to extract meaningful information from the images. There is quite a bit of mostly failed work on extracting information from unconditioned images–that is, images where there is nothing in the scene to help calibrate the images so that measurements can be taken. Our plan is to take a step back, make minor changes to the staff gauges that are commonly in those scenes and see if we can start gathering more meaningful information than what is already there. The problem with that is the size of the calibration target (the octagon in the scene) is very small compared to what we used during my Ph.D. research. It looks, though, like I can find the target fine. The problem then is to figure out how to make the calibration right after the target is found.
God willing, we will be up at University of Nebraska–Lincoln one month from now getting ready to walk in the graduation ceremony. I keep checking my student account to see if I have missed anything, but nothing new has come up for a long time, so I think I am ready to go. It is a little bit of a hard thing because the kids are planning to come home for Christmas, but that comes right after the graduation, so we think they might just watch online so they don’t have to either fly twice in a week or miss too much work.
Most of the hard copies of my dissertation are still with Troy in Lincoln, but he graciously sent me a few via FedEx. It is very cool to be able to hold one in my own hot little hands. They came out great. One thing I did not expect is that there would be only one-sided printing, but that is a good thing. Another surprising thing is that all the pages in the book are full color I am very pleased with how it all came out and thankful Troy was willing to take the time to send me a few advanced copies.
I just got notice from the printing office at University of Nebraska–Lincoln that my dissertation print run has returned from the bindery and is ready for pick-up. Troy is going to run down there and grab them for me. It all feels pretty good and real now. I am very happy with how the dissertation turned out both in terms of content and the printing. I can hardly wait to get them signed and sent out to all the people who were so helpful to me.
For posterity, I put together a final inventory of classes and research credits that appear on my transcript for my Ph.D. program. I learned a lot more new stuff than I expected when I started the program. Honestly, I enjoyed every class. The professors at School of Natural Resources professors at University of Nebraska were really great at there jobs, not only in terms of knowledge, but in terms of willingness to make accommodations for a very non-traditional, remote student and of great good will.
Transfer courses
CS 3416 Computer Networks–3 credits (UTEP MS transfer)
IE 3552 Design of Experiments–3 credits (UTEP MS transfer)
IE 3557 Applied Computer Simulation–3 credits (UTEP MS transfer)
IE 3562 CAD Graphical Elements–3 credits (UTEP MS transfer)
IE 3560 Computer Vision–3 credits (UTEP MS transfer)
SYSEN 601 Systems Engineering–3 credits (TAMU transfer)
University of Nebraska courses
AGRO 884 Water Resources Seminar–1 credit
BIOS 952 Likelihood and Bayesian Ecology–3 credits
I am grateful to my professor Troy at University of Nebraska–Lincoln for having funded the tuition and fees for my Ph.D. studies. It was especially kind of him because they were much higher than normal due to the fact that I do not live in Nebraska so he had to pay out-of-state tuition. In addition to that, special arrangements had to made because I was a full-time student with a full-time job enrolled as an on-campus student, but taking all my classes online. Every semester there was a hiccup with the tuition due to these special circumstances. The hiccups never got ironed out until after the Payment Due Date so we always got accessed a late fee which had to be waived after it was demonstrated that it was the fault of the financial department. The last semester held to form. The last late fee was waived yesterday. The only thing left now is to wait for some commencement instructions to arrive via email and to attend the commencement.
I am grateful my adviser, Troy, at University of Nebraska-Lincoln funded tuition and fees for my Ph.D. It was a bit of an odd situation. I was a full-time student, but with a full-time job. Normally, full-time students for a degree like this are paid a living stipend that I did not really want. Honestly, I think it was a pretty good deal for both of us. My contribution, bringing 40 years experience to the program in terms of research and networking, were a good bit more than what a more traditional Ph.D. student coming directly from a Bachelors or Masters degree, or even a student with a few years experience. I had worked as a volunteer for 14 years before I started the program and really wanted to continue to contribute as a volunteer during the program, so I forwent the stipend. I got a chance to volunteer and a Ph.D. and Troy got a Ph.D. student for roughly half-price relative to what he normally has to pay. It would have been a lot less for him, but he had to pay out-of-state tuition because I was not accepting the stipend as a Graduate Research Assistant.
Special accommodations were required because I was a non-traditional, full-time employed student working remotely. The tuition and fees payments got fouled up virtually every semester I was in school. In fact, it is still fouled up, because every semester they charged a late fee when they fouled up the payment. That is the last $35 dollars on my account. Now Troy has to go through the hassle of getting the late fee remove–I cannot do it myself.
It is a remarkable day in this trajectory for which, as I said previously, I am very grateful.
I am not sure whether it is official now or will be official when I get the diploma in December. Either way, it feels pretty cool to have everything official recognized as complete. It has been a long haul, but I have loved every minute of it. I have been talking with my Thesis Adviser, Troy about how I can contribute as a volunteer to keep my hand on this. We already have some ideas. I plan to put up a little more of this work here than I have in the past, but it will only happen in fits and spurts going forward. Another good aspect of this project is that I have engaged a couple of other work buddies to join the fun. One of them is about half-way through his Ph.D. while the other is working with UNL, but not scheduled to start for at least a few more months.
Quite a few months back, my professor from University of Nebraska went to work with one of his collaborators at University of Texas at Arlington is an hour or so away from where we live. It was great to have him and it felt like old times. I am really going to miss having an excuse to talk to him every week. I started helping him with his undergraduate research shortly after he started school at North Carolina State University. The research was successful and extended into his Ph.D. research. We had such a good time with it, we talked about how I might be able to continue to help him with it as a retirement project. I never expected to have the opportunity to do that in the way it worked out. I am grateful for the whole enterprise with my lifelong friend.
Got my final grades today. Kind of sad to be leaving UNL. It was a great run. Still going to participate, but it won’t be the same as just a volunteer.
My dissertation defense on June 8, 2023 was successful. I must say that it was a great way to end sixty or so years of academic effort–a lot of it, not so successful. Lorena and I drove up to Lincoln from Texas, while Christian flew out from Boston to join us. We hung out with very good friends, ate really good food, and just had a stellar time. Today, the revised dissertation was submitted to the publishing service, I signed up for walking in the graduation ceremony (December 15, 2023) and purchased my cap, gown, and hood. Looking forward to the ceremony and celebration! Now all I need to do is figure out what to do next.
Still on track to graduate in December, 2023. After my dissertation was submitted to my committee, two of the members designated as readers recommended a few changes and approved the dissertation as ready for defense. I have submitted the paperwork for department approval, after which I will be able to schedule a room for the event. I have vacation scheduled to travel to Lincoln for the defense, Christian has a ticket to fly out to provide moral support. The plan, God willing, is to drive to Omaha the day before the event to pick up Christian, then defend on June 8. It seems more real now than when I was in the middle of it. Can hardly believe I am this close to the end.
