By Zachary Yuan ’27
Since arriving at Andover in 2016, Tracey Golini has held many roles: teaching physics, working in admissions, and serving as a complimentary house counselor at Eaton Cottage until last year. Her contribution to education is built on a foundation of hands-on learning; Golini has worked in laboratories as a laboratory engineer, as well as publishing papers with graduate students before switching to an educational career.
Raised in Rochester, New York, also known as the ‘World Capital of Imaging’, Golini initially pursued a medical career at the University of Rochester before switching to a career in engineering and optics. “There were a lot of jobs in optics in lots of industries… My future boss called during the summer before my senior year and offered me a job at the laboratory for laser energetics, which was part of the University of Rochester. It’s one of a few laser labs in the country fully funded for research. At that point, we had a 24 beam laser. And they were all focused onto a tiny target. The targets varied, but we were looking to do laser fusion. They would run the laser and measure how much energy was put into the situation versus how much came out.”
Golini worked in the materials lab for her professor. Her job was to work in a clean room and assemble liquid crystal polarizers, and conduct liquid crystal research with the 24 beam laser. For example, utilizing the crystals she worked with, Golini attempted to make polarizers that would withstand the energy of the high powered lasers. Similar to sunglasses, typical polarizers are sheets of plastic or a coating on the glass. However, that would have burned in the laser. Consequently, she took two glass substrates that had to be perfectly clean, laid plastic on them, and engraved a circular pattern. Later, her team filled the thin layer of liquid crystal, which sorted itself into a pattern, and then circularly polarized each laser beam.
“I’d have to go and install them into the laser. And then if they got damaged, which they would because the laser was so powerful, I’d have to replace them, or clean them, or make new ones,” Golini explained.
Since the lab Golini worked in was affiliated with the university, she had three undergraduate students working with her. That was when she realized she enjoyed teaching her students more than she enjoyed the research itself. Golini went back to the University of Rochester to get an education degree, and fell in love with the art of teaching.
“I decided very early on that I should have always just been a teacher and gotten my teaching degree in my fifth year in college.” She took control into her own hands: she taught students while she was working at the laser lab and attended school at the same time. During this time, she also published papers with graduate students.
Golini’s work in the lab isolated her from her love of working with people. Since it was critical for the rooms to remain clean, nobody was allowed to enter, or even say hello to her unless they wore gowns, and underwent various deionizing procedures.
After Golini got her teaching degree, she left her job in the lab and taught at a public school next to the university, Brighton High School. Later in her life journey, she found herself at Phillips Academy Andover. Golini describes how she finds both schools she’s taught in to have many similarities and differences, and that the years she spent teaching in Brighton High School has helped prepare her for Andover.
“The schools are similar in terms of the quality of students. And in quality, I don’t mean intelligence, I mean in terms of enthusiasm for learning.”
What Golini loves the most about teaching is the interactions with students, and the satisfaction watching them learn and understand a topic. “I love my classroom. I love making connections with students. I like to get students excited about physics, whether it’s hard for them or not, and have them have an ‘aha’ moment. And that’s why I’ve been doing it for 30 years.”
Golini’s favorite subject to teach has always been optics. She is in awe of how fast the speed of light is. “One of my favorite things to think about is the early methods people used to try to figure out the speed of light. Like what did Galileo do? He shined lanterns on mountains, and as he knew precisely how far apart these were, he could measure the reaction time and calculate the speed of light.”
“And that’s why I really love physics,” Golini repeatedly emphasizes. Her goal is to take a concept that is difficult to comprehend because of its size or magnitude, and have her students make sense of it in terms of a common, observable phenomenon. Her favorite question to ask: “And so how do you make sense of it all?”
Read more articles like this in our Fall 2024 Issue!
