Below is from "Spotlight on U" of Union College's Media Office, by Lisa Straton - Posted May 20 2005
Seyfollah Maleki
Undergraduate College: University of New Orleans
Major : Physics
Minerva : Green House
Hometown : Tehran, Iran
Long before Union College launched its Converging Technologies Program, Professor Seyfollah “Seyffie” Maleki was combining the arts and science in his life.
Seyffie, who has taught physics at Union for more than 20 years, enjoys reading literature and studying the arts. He even spent some time sculpting and painting in years past.
“Being in the liberal arts environment as a scientist has been extremely invigorating for me,” he said. “And believe it or not, science can be creative too.”
Union's focus on interdisciplinary education – in recent years through the CT Program – has made teaching here even more rewarding, Seyffie said. “The divisions were far more separate before the CT program,” he said. “The learning opportunities for both students and teachers have increased tremendously since it began.”
Seyffie has team taught several interdisciplinary courses with a historian, mathematician, chemist, biologist and engineer. He cites the course, “Physics and Politics,” which he taught cooperatively with history professor Mark Walker, as one of his favorites.
“The viewpoints of other disciplines are so refreshing to me,” he said. “It's one thing to take a history course, and quite another to team teach it. I learned more not only about history, but also about my own science through teaching this course and interacting with colleagues from other departments to teach other courses.” Another of his favorites was “Seeing the Light – Concepts of Vision,” which he taught with Leo Fleishman of the biology department.
Seyffie's love of the arts and incorporating visuals in his teaching of physics can be seen online through “web books” he developed for teaching science to non-scientists. Although the photos are unrelated to the course material, he said they “brighten them up” and often serve as visual “bookmarks” for students who might not think like typical science majors.
Seyffie, 52, was born in Tehran, Iran, and came to the United States to attend college. As the youngest of six children, he remembers clearly his parents encouraging their children to read literature and appreciate the arts. “No one in my family was pushed toward the sciences,” he said, although both he and a brother are physicists. “Math and science came naturally to me,” he said. “I used to build a lot of things as a child in my own home laboratory.”
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1974 from the University of New Orleans, Seyffie made his way to upstate New York to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he earned a Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics. He was first hired by Union in 1981 as an adjunct professor and later as a permanent member of the physics and astronomy department. His primary areas of research are laser spectroscopy and atom cooling.
“I have had a real blast here at Union,” Seyffi said. “It is a tremendous place that has given me the opportunity to be happy and continue to learn.”
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Last Modified: December 25, 2005
Seyffie Maleki Associate Professor of Physics Union College, Schenectady, New York, 12308 USA
Telephone: (518) 388-6255