Professor Profile: Jacquelynne Milingo

By Evan Rothera

Everyone knows what it is like to receive a spam e-mail message: namely frustrating. In the same way, it would also be frustrating to receive e-mails meant for someone else. However, what would be the appropriate feeling when you receive a plethora of e-mails from people who think you were an African Archbishop and want you to perform mass exorcisms? 99 people out of 100 will never have to worry about this, but Professor Jacquelynne B. Milingo is that one person out of 100. When she was in college, e-mail was still a relatively new thing and she actually received a lot of e-mail from people who thought she was Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and wanted her to perform a mass exorcism.
In addition to sharing her name with Archbishop Milingo, Professor Milingo is a Kansan at heart; despite being born in born in Phoenix, Arizona she loves Kansas. She is a huge fan of the band Queen, loves to play guitar, but insists that she is not very good, and her favorite movie is Strictly Ballroom. Many people would not guess this by looking at her, but when she was in grad school, Milingo had a stalker named Ulysses S Grant. She said that, to this day, “I sort of have this strange reaction when people mention Ulysses S. Grant or stalkers”
Milingo did her undergraduate work at the University of Kansas and her graduate work at the University of Oklahoma. After earning her PhD, Milingo started to look for a job; since her experience was with larger state schools, she did know that a lot of the small liberal arts colleges even existed. Ironically, when she was at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta, Georgia, she met Dr. Laurence Marschall, who told her about a job at Gettysburg College. She came to visit, thought the college was charming and decided to take the job which involved serving as a two-year replacement for professors on back to back sabbatical leaves. After the two years were up, she left Gettysburg College and decided to work at Franklin and Marshall College.
After working at Franklin and Marshall for a few years, Milingo decided that she wanted to move on; though she received offers from other institutions, she decided to come back to Gettysburg. Her reasons included the collegial and friendly environment of the college and the fact that it is a nice place to work. She did not regret the decision to return because Gettysburg College has a very supportive environment. She found it a good thing to have support and collegiality within your department and the college as a whole. In addition, Milingo also likes the mission statement of the college and feels that the students are fabulous, gregarious, willing, enthusiastic, and intelligent.
Her favorite thing about Gettysburg College is the sense of community and collegiality; her best friends are people on campus, but not just in the physics department. She said that she “adores the people I work with in this department; they are good educators, good researchers’ good people, and I really like them. However, I also have an extremely good friend in the Philosophy Department and in the Economics Department.” In her opinion it is fun to spend time with all of the faculty and people in administrative positions and the support staff. Milingo did comment that doing science at a liberal arts college can be a challenge, because you have to adapt, but it is worth it to have all of the plusses which Gettysburg College offers.
Milingo has done poster presentations, various talks, and has three publications in peer review journals, concerning planetary nebula abundances; in essence she does spectroscopy of old dying stars.
Milingo commented concerning the new three-two program that, “Liberal Arts colleges are great and have such good, high quality teaching, but are much heavier on the teaching compared to a state institution.” She stressed that there were more aspects to the jobs of the faculty members than teaching. “Scholarship [research] keeps us active and current, remember that we are students also and we are still learning.” Milingo feels that this new policy frees up time for other responsibilities. She also stressed the fact that if faculty keep current and active in scholarship, opportunities are created for students to help with research.
Milingo said that there are many people who inspire her and in whom she believes, which include her sister, who is raising three kids and working, and women in the sciences like Vera Rubin. She feels she could never be like them or do what they did, but they inspire her to do the best she can. Also, she is inspired by the men and women she works with. They do their best, on a daily basis, to work hard, provide to this college or whatever environment they are in, and to be good people. She considers this extremely impressive.
In her free time she does household chores, loves to play guitar, knit, sew, hike, listening to music, watching movies, being with friends and family, and reading. She generally prefers collections of short stories and really enjoyed Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.
Professor Milingo advises students to take advantage of the resources that are available to you as it is an amazing experience and opens a lot of doors. Furthermore, taking advantage of these opportunities can do a good job of opening eyes in terms of what is out there in the world and the things in which you can be involved and make a difference in. She also advises students not to treat college as an insular experience, as it is much more than the sum total of the classes you take. She concluded by saying that students should realize how very privileged they are to be here in such a fabulous learning environment, because not all colleges are like this.