Professor Randy Coleman's Retirement Lecture
On Saturday, May 11th Professor Randy Coleman gave his retirement lecture, "A Walk Down Memory Lane with Professor Coleman: Reflections on a Career of Connections." It culminated his 54th year of teaching at William & Mary and introduced his plans for life in retirement.
With almost 300 people in the audience, Professor Coleman’s lecture was well-attended and filled with decades of memories of achievements from himself and from his students. Starting in 1970 and ending in 2024, numerous stories and anecdotes were shared about changes in student advising, innovations in teaching chemistry, quirks about buildings on campus, romance in his research lab, superheroes like Iron Man, and more.
It’s estimated that Professor Coleman taught as many as 20,000 students since his first lecture in disciplines such as organic chemistry, biology, neuroscience, kinesiology, biochemistry, pre-medicine, and in first-year seminars not specifically targeting science majors. He is loved far and wide by alumni of several generations and many expressed an interest in his final lecture. You can view Professor Coleman's lecture on YouTube via the link below.
An endowment was founded to honor Professor Coleman, the Randy Coleman Chemistry Mentorship Endowment. This fund supports mentoring by peers and faculty alike to support future generations of chem and STEM students at W&M.
{{youtube:medium:center|sy4qkhIKAVA, "A Walk Down Memory Lane" with Professor Coleman}}
