WAUKESHA – Ghulam Shah, who traveled from Kashmir, India, to Milwaukee in pursuit of a Ph.D., in 1966 became the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s first doctoral graduate. This June he will retire from a 37-year career teaching mathematics, the last 33 of those years at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha.
Always fond of mathematics, Shah earned a bachelor’s degree in math and economics from Jammu and Kashmir University and then won a Zia-Ud-din award for placing first in the master’s degree examination in mathematics held by Aligash Muslim University. In addition to the master’s degree, he completed a law degree and a diploma in statistics that same year, 1958, at the same university. Like many of his peers, he also studied law “in case I wanted to go into administrative work – to keep my options open.” Yet he knew he preferred math.
For the next five years, he taught undergraduate engineering students, but he felt the tug to pursue a Ph.D. Through a mentor, a Professor Marden who taught at UW-Milwaukee, Shah traversed half the world to fulfill his academic dream. He worked as a teaching and research assistant for the three years it took him to complete his doctorate and then taught for four more years as a UW-Milwaukee tenure-track faculty member.
He settled in Waukesha, however, and in 1970, UW-Waukesha lured him away, at first offering a visiting associate professorship but never letting go.
“I really enjoyed the teaching,” he confesses, but his 1999 coronary by-pass surgery has shaken his confidence about his health. “I worry about falling ill and causing unnecessary disruption” in the conduct of his classes. Teaching was more than his job, it was his mission. “It is the only profession I could see myself having stayed in for so long,” Shah, 66, realizes. “I tried to do the best job I could in the classroom and felt students were understanding. Yet I often got sad when grading exams” when he found students not able to demonstrate the comprehension he perceived in the classroom.
Although he has done some research, securing a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation grant and publishing a number of articles chiefly focusing on the zeroes of polynomial solutions in differential equations and on univalent functions, he has devoted most of his time and talent to teaching and governance. He served on the UW System Advisory Committee on Fringe Benefits for 8 years, two as chair, and on the UW System mathematics placement committee from 1978 to 2000. He has chaired the UW Colleges Mathematics Department for 7 years and sat on the UW Colleges Faculty Senate.
He did not plan to get so involved with governance. “It just happened,” he admits. Yet, his legal training – along with his keen mind and gentle manner – undoubtedly had prepared him for the challenge.
With his commitments to teaching and governance lifted, Shah thinks he might get back to research. “I like math,” he says. He also enjoys his three granddaughters and will stay in Brookfield to be close to them.
Shah and his wife, Zubeda, have three grown sons. |
