Meet your new kick-ass Master, Professor Paul Hudak. As a member of the Yale faculty for 27 years, he’s taught 21 different Computer Science classes, invented the Computing and the Arts major, and chaired the Computer Science Department for six years. For the last six years, he’s been the head coach of the the local Hamden High school girls lacrosse team.  In 1995, he played piano for a band called Collectively Speaking, which was voted the best jazz band in New Haven in the New Haven Advocate’s annual reader poll. He’s even held top-secret DOD clearance for his work at Watkins-Johnson Company. On top of that, he’s a husband and a father: he and his wife Cathy have two grown daughters (Cristina and Jennifer), who both live in Utah.  Cristina is attending graduate school for psychology at the University of Utah and Jennifer is a professional free-style skier, who won a Bronze Medal at the 2007 Winter X Games and Silver Medal in the 2009 X Games.

C: Are you excited to be our new Master?

MH: Very much so!!!  And so is my wife Cathy.  Becoming a college master is something I’ve thought a lot about for the past few years — it feels right for me.  I just hope that I can do a good job!

C: Have Master Kamens and former Master Miller been helping your transition to the position?

MH: They have been unbelievably helpful and supportive. They invited us to attend any and all events that happened this spring, and opened up their house for us to walk through, invading their privacy. The four of us got together one night for dinner and spent four hours going over the entire year’s schedule. Master Kamens sat with his laptop, Dean Miller with her laptop, and my wife took notes on her laptop and created what we call the “Saybrook Matrix” — a kind of guide for us to think about what’s coming up on a week-by-week basis. Master Kamens and Dean Miller have been incredibly gracious in helping us take on this job that they clearly loved so much.

[Editor's note: This interview was conducted and originally posted in June]

C: What are your plans for your first year as Saybrook Master?

MH: Have fun, learn the ropes, get to know as many students as I can, and try not to make too many mistakes.

C: If you could convince anyone to come for a Master’s Tea next year, who would it be?

MH: That’s a tough one. Clearly one of the coolest things about being Master is being able to invite truly extraordinary people to eat cookies and drink tea and share their life experiences with us. But the list is too long for me to pick just one…

C: Can we expect to hear more jazz music from you next year?

Hudak (lower left) with his former band, Collectively Speaking.

MH: I hope so! But not just from me — I think there are a fair number of students who like to play jazz, and I’d like to create a outlet for them to play. I’d like to run a little jam session a few times a month or maybe even once a week and try to make it into a social thing where jazz musicians can come play, and others can listen in and have some food and drink or whatever. This is all rather fuzzy right now, but you get the idea.

C: I see you’ve coached high school girls lacrosse for seven years. Do you plan to continue coaching?

MH: Sadly, I have resigned from my coaching position at Hamden High School, which I held for eight years. It’s the only sad consequence of taking on the mastership, but it’s really not possible for me to do both.

C: Do you think having been a coach will help you in your role as Master?

MH: It’s funny you should ask. I announced my retirement at our team’s end-of-year banquet last weekend, and in my farewell speech, I said these words, “I can’t imagine having a better training ground for being a college master than having coached lacrosse for eight years.” I truly believe that. A coach deals with so many issues. A good coach does not so much control his players as empower them, help them grow as individuals and as a group, and teach them life lessons — just what I think a good master should do for his students.

C: What are your summer plans?

MH: First of all, my wife Cathy and I have been working hard planning our move into the Master’s House on July 1. [Editor's note: This interview was conducted in the middle of June] That’s taken a lot of time, and we haven’t even moved yet. But we’ll also be hanging out in Park City, Utah, where we spend a lot of time in the mountains, hiking, camping, and mountain biking. Park City is a mecca for mountain biking. I’m also trying to prepare for my new course in the fall, while continuing to work on my new book on computer music. Oh yeah, and I’m also trying to figure out how to be a college master.

C: How is Yale different from Vanderbilt [the school Master Hudak attended]?

MH: Vanderbilt is a great school with a beautiful campus, and I had a great time and got a great education. But it didn’t have a residential college system! Instead, most of the social life was organized around fraternities. I was a Kappa Sig. We were cool. But Yale’s residential college system is way better. Students here probably take it for granted, but it really is special. It’s what I always tell parents is the best thing about Yale.

C: Are you going to miss being a professor at Yale?

MH: This is a trick question, right? Being Master does not relieve me of my professorial duties… I will still teach and do research, although my teaching load is reduced.

C: What was your first job?

MH: My very first job as a kid was running a newspaper route. In those days we had to deliver the papers AND collect the money from customers. I remember when the rates went up I didn’t have the heart to tell some of my elderly clients, so I just kept collecting the old amount. After awhile I realized that I wasn’t making any money, and I didn’t have enough sense to do the math to figure out why. I was about 12 years old. I eventually quit and remember thinking, “I will never be a good businessman”. Years later (and I mean like 30 years later!) my older brother admitted to me that he had been stealing money from my money box!!! So I suppose I have my brother to thank for steering me into academia instead of business

C: What was it like growing up in Baltimore with 5 siblings?

MH: We were an incredibly close-knit Italian family. My father was Czech, but my mom was Italian, and she had the upper hand in raising the kids. We lived in northeast Baltimore across the street from Herring Run Park. Herring Run was a stream that had warning signs about getting typhoid fever; I think some amount of sewage was dumped directly into it. We spent hours and hours in “the woods” as we called it, crossing the stream (jeez, what were our parents thinking to let us do that?), building tree-forts, having stone-throwing fights with kids from adjacent neighborhoods, etc. We lived in a tiny three bedroom house. Three brothers in one room, two in another, and my parents and my sister (the youngest and only girl) in the third. There was no air conditioning in those days, just a single fan that ran all night in the stairwell. It’s funny that I don’t remember ever being hot — you just got used to it I guess.

C: What’s your favorite possession?

MH: Hmm, that’s a tough one. I can’t decide between my mountain bike, my piano, and my skis!

C: Favorite TV show?

MH: This is one of those questions that reveals the dumb side of people. Ok, so my wife and I watch American Idol every season. We also like Medium. And I watch lots of sports, of course.

C: Favorite movie?

MH: The Shawshank Redemption.

C: How did you and your wife Cathy meet?

MH: On a hike in the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. She had been living in Salt Lake City for three years at that point, and I had just moved there from Maryland to attend grad school at the University of Utah. I found out she was an engineer and had spent high school and college in Maryland. So we had a lot in common, and the rest is history.

C: Reading any good books right now?

MH: I’m reading “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. Fun stuff on the power of thinking without thinking. Before that I read Asimov’s first book in the Foundation series. I love science fiction, but somehow never read his stuff. After Blink I’ll probably move on the next book in the Foundation series.

C: Before I end this interview, is there anything you’d like to say to next year’s Saybrugians?

MH: I think the main thing I’d like to say is that I have an open door.  And an open phone and an open email box.   If you’re not happy about something, let me know — I’m here to help.  And if you ARE happy, let me know that too!  I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone, feeling the pulse of the college, and developing a sense of community and family.  See you all soon!