Orrison '95 Takes Wabash Lessons to Harvey Mudd
by Kim Johnson
One afternoon as a sophomore in high school, Mike Orrison ’95, experienced a life-changing moment while watching An Officer and a Gentleman. "I very badly wanted to be a pilot. My dad was in the Air Force so we lived on or near Air Force bases my whole life. I knew that the military was where I was headed." He described a scene in the movie where one of the recruits was at flight school submerged upside-down, under water, buckled to his seat in a simulated crash. He then had to work to get himself out. "I knew at that moment I did not ever want to be in that situation." Orrison said, "but that left a vacuum in my life, for at least that moment, where I wondered what I was going to do if I weren’t a pilot.  "So I thought maybe I would like to be a math teacher. I wasn’t really good at math but I enjoyed it."
Now, Dr. Michael E. Orrison, Jr. is an associate professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, where he is one of the leaders of the Applied Representation Theory Group (ART) and co-founder of the Pathwaysoutreach program. The focus of the ART group is "computational noncommutative harmonic analysis, with application to biology, voting theory, and signal image processing" as described on the Harvey Mudd College website. "That’s what I say when I want to impress somebody," he laughed. In more simple terms, Orrison describes his research as, "not so much getting answers to certain questions but setting up the framework and designing computational analysis to get those answers in the most efficient way possible. Sure we might be able to do it and tie up the computer for twenty hours running the analysis, but can we find a way to do it in two minutes? It’s not changing the thing we are looking at but it is changing the way we look at it." The track runner, French horn player and Lambda Chi member graduated Summa Cum Laude with a major in Mathematics and a Music minor. He went on to complete his graduate studies at Dartmouth College where he completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 2001. He has been teaching at Harvey Mudd College since then. He related his current teaching to his days as a Wabash student. "When I was an underclassman at Wabash I remember being around upperclassmen who were so dedicated to their studies. They took learning so seriously, but not to the point of boredom. I wanted to emulate them. More importantly, I knew as a future professor I wanted to create an environment for my students that encouraged that kind of dedication."  Orrison said it is okay for students to struggle with questions and that the pleasure of teaching is the pleasure of sharing in the struggle. One of the things he enjoys most about teaching is watching students gain confidence in their abilities as they tackle things bigger than themselves and bigger than they thought they could tackle. "I can pick out the seniors from the freshmen walking across campus. They carry themselves differently. There is a level of confidence in the upperclassmen that comes from their experiences and the struggles they have overcome."
He tells his students every semester, "If you leave my classroom having learned a lot of math and a lot about yourself, then I have been successful. If you leave having learned a lot of math and a little about yourself or a little math and a lot about yourself, then I have failed." Similar to his experiences as a student at Wabash, he seeks to give his students the opportunity to create themselves. "College for me was an opportunity to grow – to fall down and pick myself up. Now I want to give my students the opportunity, the framework, time and space to become who they are. I just happen to use Mathematics as the vehicle." The theory that guides his research and teaching is one that goes beyond the classroom to life. "You can change the world by changing the way people look at it."
Printer-Friendly version
| Email this profile
| 
