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It is a bit of an understatement for me to say that James C. Wyant has had a significant impact on my career. He has been my teacher, my instrument supplier, my mentor, my colleague, my boss and construction partner, and most importantly, my friend. This talk is my attempt to reflect on this journey. I first met Jim, actually Professor Wyant at the time, in 1977 when I took his Optical Testing course. I do not recall working much if any with Jim when I was a student, but the Optical Sciences Center was much smaller at the time, so we certainly knew each other. When I graduated in 1980, I went to work at the Kodak Research Labs doing, you guessed it, interferometry. This was a very interesting time for interferometry as phase-shifting interferometry was just starting to take hold. As I started publishing and became involved with this community, my interactions with Jim increased to where he became my mentor. After WYKO was founded, I purchased a couple of instruments. Jim was instrumental in recruiting me to become a faculty member, which I did in 1991. After Jim became Director of OSC, it became apparent that we needed more space, and Jim asked me to help him. We started by drafting a ridiculously optimistic forecast of the growth of OSC that would be enabled by a new building. The forecast led to approval, an initial budget, and got the process started. Jim then essentially asked me “to go build a building,” which led to a pre-architectural study, revised budgets, selecting an architect, design, selecting a contractor and construction (with ample donuts at the weekly construction meetings). We occupied the building in 2006 only to find that the building was essentially completely full on move-in, and that we had already met the ridiculously optimistic forecast! About the same time in 2005, Jim convinced the University to elevate us to the College of Optical Sciences, and Jim became our first Dean.
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