Gresham T. Riley Award-2002 - Colorado College

Professor Richard L. Hilt

Richard L. Hilt joined the faculty in 1964, moving to Colorado Springs from North Carolina State University, where he was an assistant professor. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He chairs the physics department at CC.

The author of several articles in professional journals, Dick is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the Society of the Sigma Xi, and the American Association of Physics Teachers. He was director of the Student Science Training Program (NSF funded) at CC, was an instructor at the NSF Workshop for High School Science Teachers here, and he has reviewed introductory physics texts for various publishers.

For many moons now, his astronomy students have observed planets, stars, nebulae and other heavenly bodies with the 16-inch telescope atop Barnes Science Center. The campus telescope, he says, is the perfect teaching device. It has a memory of 200 common objects and pans easily across the night sky. The observatory is occasionally opened to the campus community for Star Parties, and many alumni have attended Dick’s annual star gazing sessions at Homecoming. Astronomy classes also make forays to the CC Cabin and the Baca Campus to enjoy the splendid Colorado skies.

Dick also teaches a number of interdisciplinary classes at CC, including “Renaissance Culture,” “Literature and Science,” and “The Origins of Modern Science.” And like all good professors of liberal learning, Dick believes a fundamental understanding of physics obviously has many applications. Everybody is welcome in his classes: students wanting to become physicists themselves, students who wish to apply physics to careers in applied science, engineering, chemistry, or biology, as well as students who have no professional interest in science but who wonder what the physical universe might be like.

When not in the classroom, Dick’s sabbatical leaves have been spent at UC Berkeley’s department of physics, as a visiting research geophysicist at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and in Boulder at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado and the NOAA Gravity Observatory.

Dick enjoys singing with the CC Choir and the Colorado Springs Chorale, the Colorado Opera Festival and Opera Theater of the Rockies. One little known fact is that Dick once auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He’s glad he kept his day job. He loves it.