After 50 years, beloved Carleton staffer Russ Petricka has retired. Longtime supervisor of the Math Skills Center, he tutored Carls in the center’s many homes as it traveled from Leighton to Willis to Scoville to its current home in the Center for Mathematics and Computing. In 1989, Petricka began instructing aerobics as well, and ever since, he’s been a legendary campus figure—rivaled only by Schiller or Oscar the Penguin—for Carls who matriculated after 1975.
“I didn’t think I would ever leave, really. Right when I started, I thought this is going to be what I want to do for as long as I continue working,” Russ told Nhi Luong ’25 recently. “‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘This is ideal. This is an ideal position for me.’”