Robert,
Steven, and Judy Gluckstern on a recent trip to Chile and Argentina.
Steven and Judy established a professorship in Physics to honor
Robert, who served as vice chancellor for academic affairs and
provost of UMass Amherst from 1969 to 1975.
Steven Gluckstern ’74G came to UMass Amherst when he was 13 years old. He wasn’t a precocious freshman; his relationship to campus was the result of his father, Robert L. Gluckstern, being appointed head of the physics department. Later Robert served as vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost of UMass Amherst from 1969 to 1975. As Steven’s father was rising through the administrative ranks, his mother, Norma B. Gluckstern, was earning one degree after another, ultimately graduating with an EdD in counseling psychology from the School of Education.
“She went back to college after having three children,” says Steven. “She used to point out that she graduated from college when I went into high school, got her master’s when I was a senior, and her EdD when I graduated from Amherst College.”
UMass Amherst was on the verge of a huge growth spurt when the Gluckstern family came to town. “There wasn’t a single traffic light in town back then,” recalls Steven, with a laugh. His father’s appointment as head of the Physics Department was one of 30 appointments. During Steven’s formative years, the baby boomers were turning into college students in record numbers. From the mid-1960s into the 1970s, an earlier version of what Chancellor Lombardi calls “new dirt” gave rise to the Southwest dorms, the Du Bois Library, and other major additions to the campus.
After earning his own EdD from the School of Education, Steven left Amherst for teaching positions in New York and Washington, D.C., and at an international school in Tehran. He was superintendent of schools in Telluride, Colorado, when he decided to switch careers. With an MBA from Stanford, he went into the field of investment, at one point working for famous financier Warren Buffett. In 1988, he and his friend and colleague Michael Palm launched Centre Re, a reinsurance venture based on a radically new approach to the business that has since become an industry standard. In a profile of Steven, Stanford business professor George Parker recalled that Gluckstern needed $150 million to capitalize the venture. “I said he would never get it and was very critical of his plan. About six or eight months later, I get a call from him. He’d gotten the money. I was just awestruck. Steve is a doer and a salesman.”
Also a brilliant businessman and the former owner of two pro hockey teams, Steven describes himself as “fundamentally a humanist.” Among the causes to which he and his wife, Judy, contribute are various theaters; Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS; the Democracy Alliance; and UMass Amherst. In recent years, he has endowed two chairs on campus, in honor of the men he says were “the most influential men in my life.”
The Robert L. Gluckstern Distinguished Professorship in Physics honors his father, a man of many accomplishments and, in Steven’s words, “a very humble guy.” Robert has a PhD in physics from MIT and has researched accelerator physics with colleagues at Los Alamos, Brookhaven, and CERN, the world’s largest particle physics center.
The Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professorship in Education Policy and Reform honors the man who served as dean of the School of Education from 1968 to 1975. During his tenure, Allen oversaw an era of rapid expansion and outstanding innovative activity for the school. Steven calls him “an extraordinary man, a real character,” adding, “he and my father were good friends and supporters of each other. They are very different from one another, but one trait that they have in common, that has really been their legacy to me, is their willingness to accept and deal with people as they are. Whether the person was a Nobel Prize winner or a custodian, they would treat that person exactly the same.”
This fall, Sharon Rallis became the first Allen professor. To the position she brings a national reputation in her field of educational policy and evaluation, and comparable expertise, having been a classroom teacher, program coordinator of a regional research lab, a lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and a professor at Vanderbilt University and the University of Connecticut. The professorship strengthens the school’s ability to produce well-versed and well-rounded educators.
That’s certainly appropriate. “Both of these men were and still are extraordinary teachers,” said Steven of his father and Allen, when he endowed the professorships. “They exemplified a lot of what I wanted to be when I grew up: intellectually honest, inquisitive, risk-takers, and extraordinarily generous with time and resources.”
