Chemistry professor Dale Hammond has announced that he will retire on July 1, 2003, after teaching at BYU-Hawaii for a total of 36 years. Hammond’s association with the university began in 1959 when he and his wife, Carol, came to Hawaii for their honeymoon. At that time, the campus was just four years old and called the Church College of Hawaii. “Everything was sugar cane all around the community then. The old school and mission home were still up,” Hammond said. “At CCH we had the McKay building, what's now the General Classroom Building and what is now the School of Business.” “There was nothing commercial here except for Goo's and Sam's store,” added Ms. Hammond. “The shopping center, which started in 1969, has been a real boon; otherwise, we had to go to Kaneohe or Wahiawa to do our shopping. We made $4,400 our first year. Of course, doctor visits were only three dollars.” He had earlier attended Rick’s College in Rexburg, Idaho, and served a two-year mission in Denmark for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.“ "I'm the one who established the chemistry program here. I was the first chemistry teacher that Church College had,” he said. Hammond graduated from BYU in Provo, Utah, in 1959 with a degree in chemistry and joined the 36-member CCH faculty that same fall. In the early days of his career, Hammond also taught math, tumbling, and even folk dancing. He also established the Intercollegiate Knights service club program on campus, and “we were in charge of ushering for the grand opening of the Polynesian Cultural Center in 1963,” he said. The following year Hammond started work on his doctoral program in chemistry at the University of Hawaii, where he also taught half-time under the National Science Foundation and other national grants. His studies included research on volcanoes and moon rocks, leading to a post-doctoral offer from NASA. But after earning his Ph.D. in 1971, he returned to teaching full-time in Laie. With the exception of a three-month assignment in Samoa to teach for the Church Education System in 1975, as well as a three-year leave of absence in the early ‘80s to do private research and be close to his parents in Las Vegas, Hammond and his family have lived in Laie ever since. They built their own home in 1978 and all of their seven living children were born here and attended local schools. Hammond has been very involved in community affairs over the years. He was one of the early Laie Community Association presidents, helped start the lease-to-fee property conversion process in the late 1970s so homeowners in Laie could buy their land, and played a key community role in establishing the Laie Water Reclamation Facility. Recently giving the keynote address at the 2YC3 Conference on Chemical Education in New Orleans, Hammond said that he appreciates how his career has evolved over the years. “When I came it was chalk and eraser,” he said. “Lab work was totally bench work with no instrumentation at all. Now we use extensive instrumentation, even in our general chemistry class, collecting data into computers. We can collect superb data in two or three minutes that we could never have gotten before.” “I love what I'm doing,” Hammond added. “When I got my doctorate, I knew I wanted to teach in a small college, so I designed my program with a broad exposure to a lot of things. That's allowed me to also teach oceanography, geology, and natural biology classes with Phil Bruner that have included four-day hikes on the neighbor islands. We’ve hiked Haleakala crater [a volcano on Maui] 10 times.” He noted, "many of our chemistry students go on for Ph.D’s at prestigious universities. Every one of them has said they were well prepared by the background they got at BYU-Hawaii.” Hammond also feels today’s students are better prepared spiritually when they come to BYU-Hawaii. “There are more of them going on missions now. I've also grown tremendously spiritually because of the many church callings I've had in Laie,” he said. After he retires, he plans to do some work with a mainland group that’s developed an instrument to collect data from laboratory experiments in chemistry. He and his wife also are putting in their papers for a part-time mission in the Laie Family History Center, where they are currently the directors. “The thing I will miss the most is working with the students, especially those students who are really eager to learn,” Hammond said. “I love teaching the students. I think any kind of student will do well here, but the student who is less sure of himself, or is not an aggressive leader, is better nourished here because of the personal attention they get.”