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Mike Swinson
Vestavia, Alabama
ME, 1985

The best memories I have of Auburn Engineering are about my dad, Dr. W. F. Swinson who taught Mechanical Engineering from the early 1960's through 1989. Bias from his son could certainly be claimed, but the memories are those told to me by his former students after being asked "Are you Dr. Swinson's son?" The stories are numerous but these are three that are most common.

In his Strength of Materials class, he used a book of the same title, also know as "The Orange Book". His mantra was that school was for studying and little else. So he would tell the students that the neat thing about The Orange Book was that it was portable and could be taken to whatever event that was going to interrupt studying such as a football game, or going home for the weekend, or to a "social engagement". Consequently, his office became adorned with pictures of students with The Orange Book at a variety of SEC football stadiums, in an F14 cockpit, in a NASA command module, at the beach, and, in the most complimentary fashion, at graduation with Magna Cum Laude tassels.

Carrying the "college is for studying" theme further, the second story involved his Monday quiz. He always gave a Monday quiz. Always. No exception. The weekend was meant for studying. One of his classes was successful in getting him to agree to have a vote on whether to have the Monday Quiz on Tuesday after Thanksgiving or on Dr. Swinson's established day. The class voted unanimously, as expected, for the quiz to be on Tuesday. But Dr. Swinson said "Okay, I vote for the test to be on Monday, so it will be on Monday....but at least you got to vote."

The last story involves Mrs. Swinson and the class final. Dr. Swinson would often dictate that the final would be either a turn-in-the-homework problem notebook which he added to each week of the course, or he would he give a final exam. This way, the student had to stay engaged through out the semester by doing homework as well as study for the final exam. He would say that since Mrs. Swinson was going to be the one grading either the homework notebook or final exam, and that she would give him her preference in a plain brown envelope the morning of the exam, at which time he would open it and say "Mrs. Swinson picks...." Some students chose to play the odds, and in most of these cases, they were back to take the course again the next semester!

Picking a common theme based on what I heard from dad's former students, it would be "Dr. Swinson was a gifted teacher. He was hard, but I learned the most I could from him. And I'm a better person for it." I could have lived anywhere in the south, or the country for that matter. But I would not trade living in Alabama where I frequently meet people who share their fond memories of my dad for any other location.