AC_1965_Web

31 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z E C K R O A D ECKROAD STEVE Co-op job at Arthur D. Little, 1962. THEN AND NOW 4 B.A. Physics FAMI LY 4 Wife, Barbara 4 Son, Daniel 4 Daughter, Megan Miller 4 Granddaughter, Sara CONTACT 650 296-1454 steve@eckroad.com I A M C U R R E N T L Y a technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, Calif., where I have been em- ployed for 22 years. EPRI is a non- profit, collaborative research organi- zation whose mission is to advance safe, reliable, affordable and environ- mentally responsible electricity for society through global collaboration, thought leadership and science and technology innovation. I conceive and manage research into technolo- gies that will help provide a sustain- able energy future.These include en- ergy storage for renewable energy integration and superconducting transmission systems for low-loss bulk power transmission. Between graduation from Antioch and my career at EPRI, I worked for Arthur D. Little Co., Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Bechtel Corporation. Without particularly trying, I have al- ways seemed to wind up working in areas associated with novel or cut- ting edge technology. I will retire from EPRI at the end of 2015, but plan to continue part-time consulting in energy re- lated fields. One retirement project is trying my hand at writing a sci- ence fiction novel about“accidental” time travel and parallel universes. I am having fun researching topics in astronomy, cosmology and rela- tivity; reading stimulating books such as Kip Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps and viewing an excel- lent set of college-level courses on DVD that my brother Kip (Antioch ’67) turned me on to. (“The Great Courses”—highly recommended for subjects you never studied but always wanted to.) On the writing itself, I am getting significant literary help from my wife, Barbara. She is a published poet and a retired school- teacher, and is currently completing a master’s in English. We are both active in our church which serves an ethnically diverse community in San Francisco.We live in a funky little seaside village south of San Francisco called El Granada. We have two wonderful chil- dren, both married, and one grand- daughter. Our oldest, Megan Miller, is an artist and the mother of our granddaughter, Sara,who is complet- ing a Biblical Studies major at North Central University in Minneapolis. Megan’s husband, Brian, is an in- ternet security expert. They live in Washington, D.C.. ANTIOCH AND LIFE JOURNEY I grew up in Yellow Springs and often played on the campus and in the Glen as a child—both were just two blocks away. My father gradu- ated from Antioch and my mother attended as well. I transferred to Antioch after one year at Cornell. Antioch provided me with a wonder- ful education that broadened me in ways unusual for people in the kind of career I have chosen. In my field of work I have sometimes seemed to others to be kind of a “Renaissance Man” due to my wide interests and knowledge base. I attribute this all to the foundation and life direction I re- ceived at Antioch. My Antioch major was physics and the normal course after gradu- ation would have been grad school. Instead I ended up taking a 10-year detour before coming back to the world of science and engineering. The detour was slow in develop- ing as I was pulled in different di- rections, all the while influenced by increasing use of psychedelic drugs and a desire to find a deeper mean- ing in life. After a year interning in the Amherst College physics de- partment and a subsequent year at Arthur D. Little Co. (a former co-op employer) during which I helped re- searchers develop a model of lunar volcanism, I finally abandoned my planned career in science altogether (or so I thought). In 1967, I“dropped out”—meaning that I put on beads, grew my hair long and headed for San Francisco. It was the beginning of a spiritual journey, the best part