Tribute to TED

This was just printed in the Utah State magazine. Visit www.utahstate.usu.edu and look for Ted's smiling face. We love you Ted.

There's a waiter in a Logan restaurant looking for sympathy from his white–shirted colleagues because he's not sure he's fully prepared for tomorrow's mid–term. He holds his fellow servers captive with amusing stories from the class and with jokes the professor tells during voluntary, bonus study sessions at night. But when he suddenly says “albedo,” the suspicions of about three–quarters of the restaurant are confirmed: he's a student in Ted Alsop's physical geography class. “That's right kid,” says one customer waiting for a table, “just remember, it's albedo…not libido!”
Such is the professor's gift. You may be 10, 15, even 25 years removed from one of his handful of classes at USU, but you'll still remember a concept or two — and you'll certainly remember the man, the bona fide Aggie legend. Year after year he gets some of the highest student ratings on campus. In 1996 he goes supernova — Carnegie Professor of the Year! But it's that gift, that unusual, reach–you–individually–through–a–sea–of–200–other–students gift, that is Alsop's legacy, not the accolades. He creates this environment somehow, an environment of impassioned learning, of deep laughing, of genuine surprise. You think. You appreciate. You engage. You wonder what college would be like if all your classes were like his — or if absolutely none were — and you realize you are blessed for having merely walked through the door into his odd, reassuring, separate world. Ted's World; crafted in accordance with the Law of Anything Can Happen. Like that day in the late 1980s, two or three years after Alsop's arrival on campus. He's holding court in the old auditorium on the first floor of Old Main, one of his prime, large–enrollment venues. The palpable silence of another mid–term envelops the dozens of heads buried in its pages, students scribbling, professor propped against the stage, the moment of moments. And in the middle of it all, a thunderous voice from the balcony on high: “This is the Lord… Keep your eyes on your own damn paper!” And it sounds sort of like Ross Peterson — one of the guys who hired Alsop — and you can be sure the Lord will have to answer to the professor later. But first they laugh. Everybody in the room laughs. You've never experienced such a hearty laugh. And you return to your test realizing this guy truly is a cut above and he's good for thousands of Aggies, and you pray your kids might someday get the chance to take his class and that he never retires. But this summer he does just that. Goofy, brilliant, Professor Ted takes his gift and retires — and you sense a new hush enveloping campus and the end of an Aggie era.
—Jared Thayne '99