Geography prof left lifelong impression on students
Albert W. Smith (second from right) with a meteorology class in 1942 at Clark University. Photo courtesy of Albert W. Smith family.
Several have donated to the Albert W. Smith Geography Scholarship to honor the man and his caring mentorship and to help today’s students
It was just one personal letter, but it reaffirmed, recognized and acclaimed the lifelong work of a professor.
“No one outside of my immediate family positively influenced my life more than Professor Smith,” Jim Nance, a former student, wrote to the professor’s family. “He counseled me at critical times and even rescued me once when I had lost my life’s direction.”
In 1952, Albert W. Smith joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder and became the first chair of the Department of Geography—after geography and geology split into two departments.
He served as a professor until 1983, when he retired and moved to Vashon Island, Washington. Professor Smith passed away in February 2008 at the age of 86.
Nance met Smith in 1960, when Nance was an 18-year-old freshman. “Social activities were my focus, and my college courses were not priorities,” he recalls.
But Smith had a “rare sense of humor and special human insight.” Nance had no idea what to study, and Smith suggested Geography 101. “It was my favorite class. I pulled my only B that first semester and went on to major in geography.”
At the time of his retirement, the department established the Albert W. Smith Geography Scholarship. In the past two decades, the scholarship has supported outstanding -Boulder geography students.
This year, former students have contributed to the fund for two reasons: They want to support good students of geography, and they want to honor the memory of Professor Smith.
Albert W. Smith served in the Marine Corps in the Philipines in 1945. Photo courtesy of Albert W. Smith family.
After the war, he earned his master’s from -Boulder and his doctorate from the University of Washington.
Phil Smith, manager of technical & regional services for the Bonneville Power Administration in Oregon, said that his father never spoke much about his wartime service. But the elder Smith did note, with a certain pride, that “once a Marine, always a Marine.”
Professor Smith told his family that when he was in high school, a teacher saw his academic promise and urged him to pursue scholarships, which he received. Smith came from a working-class family and going to college was not his presumptive path in life.
“I think this woman had a huge role in getting him into school,” Phil Smith observes.
The teacher also seems to have influenced the way he later viewed his role as a professor and mentor.
“He really enjoyed working with young people,” Phil Smith recalls. “I don’t think he pushed anyone. He was just encouraging.”
"Since my life has been wonderful and geography was the springboard, I will be forever grateful for his influence. I only regret that I did not tell him myself how crucial a role he played in my happiness.”
Pat Sheffels, who earned her bachelor’s in geography in 1958, recalled three professors in the department during her studies. All of them, she said, showed keen interest in their students.
Albert W. Smith was one of those nurturing mentors. “I looked on those professors as people who really cared about their students,” Sheffels said.
Sheffels taught fifth grade for a while, then started a family. Later, she became a planning commissioner in Belleview, Washington, a career that lasted two decades.
Elizabeth Reed, a 1976 geography alumna, said she “flip-flopped” during her first 18 months at -Boulder trying to decide on a major.
She discovered the Geography Department and was most drawn to cartography. “I absolutely loved all aspects of it mainly because of Dr. Smith’s teaching techniques and personality.”
Her first job after college was with the Colorado planning office, where she developed a statewide mapping system to assure that variables such as soil types, wildlife-migration patterns and fault zones were taken into account for any sort of proposed development of highways, electric lines and the like.
“I had the skills and inspiration from Dr. Smith that resulted in a very satisfying career,” Reed says, adding:
“I am so pleased that there is a venue to donate under his name and that I am able to do so. He made a huge difference in my life!”
Like Reed, Nance says geography helped his career. And like her, he contributed to the Albert W. Smith scholarship to pay respect to the man and his legacy:
“Since he contributed so much to my well-being, I want to honor his caring spirit in the form of support for geography students.”
After graduating in 1965 with his bachelor’s, Nance had a degree “but no idea of a career or profession.”
He did, however, love to ski and became a “ski bum,” teaching skiing in New Mexico and traveling to Europe to ski. There, he had an epiphany; he wanted to be a geography professor in Boulder, like Professor Smith.
Nance wrote Smith from Spain in 1968 asking Smith for help getting into a master’s program. Smith admitted Nance to the graduate program and offered Nance a teaching assistantship, which solved the question of how Nance would pay for school.
Smith’s assistance was a “watershed event in my life,” Nance writes. The once-wandering student earned his master’s and then Ph.D. in geography. He never taught at -Boulder, but his background served him well in his profession: real-estate development.
“Since my life has been wonderful and geography was the springboard, I will be forever grateful for his influence,” Nance wrote the Smith family in 2008, upon learning of his mentor’s passing. Nance added:
“I only regret that I did not tell him myself how crucial a role he played in my happiness.”
For more information on the Albert W. Smith Geography Scholarship, click .
Clint Talbott is director of communications and external relations for the College of Arts and Sciences and editor of the College of Arts and Sciences Magazine.