TCNJ

23 FALL 2023 28-foot dish in his backyard and help- ing map career paths. For Macom engineer Christopher Tenev '19, Katz did all three. "He was my professor at TCNJ, my boss at Linearizer, and he has also been an amateur radio mentor," says Tenev. "We've spent many nights in his basement listening to Morse code bounce off the moon." Katz's zest for life, whether chal- lenging his students to think through thorny problems or attaching an antenna to his car roof for ham radio expeditions on the road, has served as a guide for Tenev. "Something that he teaches and embodies is curiosity, which, in my mind, is probably the most important aspect of engineering," Tenev says. "Einstein said, 'I have no special talent, I'm only passionately curious.' More than anyone I know, Al is willing to think about things in new ways." Katz's lifelong fascination with all things electronic was sparked when he was 7 years old and saw a ham radio hobbyist interviewed on television. "We didn't have cell phones, of course, so to hear a signal from a place that was on the other side of the earth — to be able to communicate — that was really interesting," he says. Intrigued, Katz found an old radio in his father's workshop that received shortwave signals and he began to tinker. After the family moved from Montclair to Verona, New Jersey, when he was 10, Katz rode his bicycle up and down each block, hunting for houses with big antennas in the yard. He knocked on their doors and peppered the strangers with questions about where to find local clubs and how to get started. By high school, Katz had his amateur radio license and pushed his equipment to reach higher, more Al Katz (front row, far right) pictured in the 1986 Seal yearbook with the Electronics Engineering Technology faculty.

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