A TRIBUTE
IN LOVING MEMORY
Charles
A. Metzing (1960-2004)
Charles Metzing was an interesting man with many
sides: Cognitive scientist, U.S. Navy veteran, poet, journal-writer, lifelong
bibliophile, music lover and drum player, outdoorsman, social activist, substance
abuse counselor for the Red Cross, caring friend, popular teacher, beloved
family member, Mets fan, and, above all, inveterate optimist. After spending
years in California, he returned to Long Island to be near family members
and friends and to enter Stony Brook's Cognitive/Experimental Psychology
Ph.D. Program in 1999. He was a creative, enthusiastic, and productive researcher.
He presented his work at numerous conferences, his MA thesis was published
last year in the best journal in his field, Journal of Memory and Language
(and is already well-cited), and another short piece is in press in the
journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Charles was working on an
ambitious dissertation on the topic of speech production, monitoring, and
disfluency. This work has implications for how language processing is organized
in the brains and minds of healthy people, as well as those with language
disorders. When he joined us, Charles wrote:
"I want to be the detective devising ways to catch language in the act.
I want to be the journalist chronicling the life of language, presenting
a record of activities as I observe it. I want to be the student of language
ever interested in the scholarly pursuits of others in the field. I want
to be a teacher, revealing to the inquisitive what I might find and what
others have found... even if I hit the lottery (which would be an incredible
stroke of luck, since I don't play) I would still pursue a career in psychology
of language research. It is absolutely what I want to do."
Charles died unexpectedly in August, 2004 of a heart attack.
The 2004 volume of Stony Brook's Graduate Student Achievements is
dedicated to him.