CIRCUIT OVERLOAD: Tuttle tested students’ resolve. Jose Mercado/News Service

junior year for an electrical engineering major is arguably the point of no return, where students tackle core concepts and the courses test one’s resolve. My first class on my first day as a transfer student to Stanford epitomized that notion: the 8 a.m. Circuits course taught by Professor Emeritus David Tuttle.

Coming from a small college, I was naive in the ways of big-time academia. I had a vague idea that emeritus was an honorable title, but I had no idea that Professor Tuttle was a legend in his field, that he had authored the text for our course and had taught many of the other professors in the department. His animated lecture style and old-school appearance only reinforced the iconic stature, yet he was one of the most patient and considerate teachers I’ve known. From little things like the coffee and doughnuts Mrs. Tuttle would bring to class on Fridays, to big things like the Christmas party at their home in the faculty ghetto, we were treated as members of the Stanford family, not faceless occupants of classroom seats.

His goal was to teach us how to reason and solve problems, not to recite formulas and mechanically perform calculations. Perhaps nothing exemplified this better than his practice of giving oral exams, both midterm and final, which was unique in the School of Engineering. For diffident students like me, already intimidated by answering questions in the classroom, facing the celebrated professor one-on-one for 45 minutes was enough to send us in search of tranquilizers.

His usual routine called for us to stop by his office and pick up a sheet describing a tormenting problem that would serve as the basis for subsequent interpolation. After being sent to an empty classroom to work through the question, each of us would return to his office individually. Then the fun began.

Just when you thought you had a coherent solution, Professor Tuttle would start his heuristic game of cat and mouse, introducing tricky new questions and generally unraveling your thinking. “Well, now,” he might say, “what if we changed the value of this inductor? What would happen then?”

Sweating profusely, I would work my way through the new scenario, all under his gentle guidance. “Think how this might look if we took the Laplace transform,” he might say. After a few rounds of such dialectic, I would find myself working on a completely different problem. The 45 minutes seemed like an afternoon, and just when my heart couldn’t take any more stress, the professor would congratulate me on my work and send me off with one of Mrs. Tuttle’s homemade cookies.