Silvio Lacetti is a recently retired professor from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. While attending a retirement party for a colleague, he happened upon an intriguing idea: What if, rather than having a single retirement party, he organized dozens of small dinners, with one of his old students at each? And rather than simply filing it away as an interesting idea, Lacetti decided to embark on just such an odyssey.

In his article in the September-October issue of Academe, Lacetti describes the joys and excitement of meeting up with students from the full length of his academic career. Of his students, he says, “They had become compounded versions of their younger selves, with enlarged, powerful personas, but not different. …character-wise they are who they were—only more so.” The journey was thoroughly rewarding for Lacetti and his students. Read the full story in Academe.