Thornton Academy Postscripts Alumni Magazine Spring 2013 | Page 9

In t h e C lassr o o m

Alan Lukas ’68 loving the
lightbulb moment

Alan Lukas ’68 is an MIT-educated electrical engineer whose work has spanned everything from the founder
of an instrumentation company that ensures against leaks in underground gas tanks to an investor in start-up
companies across New England. These days, he’s teaching New Media courses at Thornton Academy and
loving what he calls the “lightbulb moment.”
After earning B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering, Lukas taught gifted and talented high school
students in the Boston area on Saturday mornings. “When you see a student who doesn’t think they can do
something, then they do it themselves and you see their lightbulb go on, that’s the best part.”
Lots of lightbulbs have been going on in Lukas’ 3D Graphics course. “The main goal of the course is to foster
students’ creativity. In the first week, I ask my students to use ball and cylinder shapes to create something that
looks like a person. The core goal is to get their creativity flowing.”
As a businessman himself, Lukas says “the ec