The Imaginal Institute

Eugene R. Melander, Ph.D.
Founding Fellow

 
Hello!  I am Gene Melander.
 
I was born in Minnesota in the vicinity of Lake Wobegon, but, since I was below average in all measurable ways, I was deported early in order to make accurate the widely cited statistical description of its youthful inhabitants.  Further, I would have been deported in my adulthood anyway, for I also fail to meet the norm for male residents of Lake Wobegon.
 
I come from a land of ancient fathers, which contains the universal and the particular—everyone has one; but not everyone can be one. Being a father is a special role. Biologically, assuming a willing partner, it’s easy going, but the parenting role is much more complex--after spending your single control chip in naming the new infant, you get to fret about possibilities and dream about potentialities over the rest of their lives. You soon realize, however, that their choices, pathways, and outcomes are not only beyond your direct influence, but that their behavior is neither genetically nor culturally deterministic. 
 
But what a joy to watch the development of an engaged, autonomous angel, fully capable of self-authoring her own possibilities and potentialities of soul, intellect, and experiences.  I have been three-times blessed with daughters.  Fathers sometimes mislabel as self-pride their feelings of appreciation for all the forces and people that have contributed to the growth and development of their offspring; it is better, more accurate, to register profound respect for the self-agency efforts of the offspring themselves and for the role of mothers, siblings, and other mentors, and then honestly recognize one’s own role as merely being part of the context. 
 
It gives me great pleasure in acknowledging that I am Leigh’s father, however modest my role.  And, I do so while acknowledging my deep respect for her mother, her sisters, and other mentors, as well as for Leigh’s own efforts toward personal growth and development.
 
After 40 plus years as a faculty member and academic administrator at Penn State University, I am now self-deployed in the serious activities of being a grandfather with daily after-school responsibilities and becoming proficient in the arts of fly-tying, catch-and-release trout fishing, and telling lies whenever two or more members of Trout Unlimited are assembled. 
 
I have tried to remain partially involved in the community of advising scholars on campus, participating in conference presentations and contributing occasionally to advising journals.  Basic Premise: The central question for advisers in their relationships with advisees is, “What does it mean to be an educated person? My advising scholarship has been self-consciously a-scientific—no data collection, no numerics—only experience-based observations, intuitions, reflections, and evaluations, tempered by interactions with the scholars and scholarship of the advising community.  Not long ago, I had an imaginal piece about advisers as educators, including some efforts at poetic free-verse, published in the Muse section of an advising e-journal (called The Mentor).  At any earlier stage in my academic life at a research-oriented university, tenure considerations would have precluded such frivolous scholarship activities. 
 
As to providing photos to accompany a bio, I find this a most difficult task.  The personal image I have carried with me since first I saw him in a movie has been that of the actor, Archibald Alec Leach, who has been described as “the foremost exemplar of the leading man, handsome, virile, charismatic, and charming.” No personal photo has adequately captured that image of me.  Mr. Leach died at an age several years beyond my current achievement, so perhaps it’s not too late for some sort of perverse aging process to transform reality to my favored image. In the meantime, I’ll ask you to call on your own capacities for imagining to produce an image of what you think I might look like.  Whatever you come up with, I’ll accept.

Gene's Personal Website
Mentor Publication Site (search under "Melander" to find Gene's articles)