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Teachers are those who help find strengths, wipe away tears, overpower demons and conquer fears.

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I’ll conclude this series walking down the educational memory lane with the story of two professors at the University of Central Florida that without their guidance, wisdom, and being that true mensch at the times when I needed them most..I probably wouldn’t have made it out of good old “Under Construction Forever” or “U Can’t Finish”.

Dr Trevor Colbourn – President of the University and Professor of History

The first time I met Dr Colbourn, I was absolutely convinced that I was doomed to be expelled from the university before I’d even arrived to take my place in the first class in what was at the time a journey toward a double major of Computer and Electrical Engineering.

One of the most valuable opportunities on offer for brand new Knights was a weekend stay in the dorms with upperclassmen to show us round the place so we’d know where everything was and more importantly give us some tips for navigating the bureaucracy and administration to hopefully survive the next four or so years and get a diploma to show for it.

To be sure, some of the knowledge gained on that trip was much more esoteric than it was useful such as:

• Dr Gary Wolf is a piano. I know this because our guide took us to his office/studio and there in plainly readable letters was “Gary Wolf – Piano”.
• Dr Washington cared. It said so right on the side of the building named in his honour which housed the bookstore and credit union (and apparently now has a Chick Fil-A which back in the days I was there meant a drive toward downtown on Colonial Drive to the mall!).

One of our final stops on Sunday morning before they cut us loose to enjoy just how much fun driving on the I-4 Parking Lot…isn’t…was a tour of the main administration building known as Millican Hall (named after Dr Colbourn’s predecessor and founding President of the University).

Ah, very handy stuff here…admissions, finance and accounting, financial aid, Dr Tanzi’s office (the gentleman who ran the scholarship programme I had for that first year of freedom). Check.

And then our guide pushes open these double doors to a very spacious and well-lit office with an amazing view of the fountain and the main library building as if he owns the place.

You can imagine our shock when our guide calls out to Dr Colbourn who was sitting behind that massive desk reading The Sunday Times of London with the distinctive coloured paper of the Financial Times laying near by and looks up from the story he’s reading to see who had invaded his office.

We all figured we were done for…that’s it, you don’t just bust in on the President of the university and disturb them but our guide made a beeline for Dr Colbourn and then the next thing we know we’re all getting a personal greeting and welcome to the university that literally no other orientation group got that weekend.

It turns out our guide was a History major and when Dr Colbourn wasn’t doing presidential things, he was happily teaching a few courses on American Colonial history each semester to keep his hand in.

Fast forward a couple of years and I’d switched majors from Computer and Electrical Engineering (after getting a taste of statics and thermodynamics and coming to the conclusion that enduring 90+ credit hours of stuff I *HATED* to get to the 40 or so hours I *LOVED* was just plain stupid) to Computer Science.

UCF’s Computer Science programme is one of this country’s best kept secrets. It’s also extremely rigourous and I decided I’d like my GPA to get a little help from my friend American history to counteract the beating the Department of Computer Science was doing to it so I decided to do a history minor and that’s how I ended up in Dr Colbourn’s Colonial American History class.

It couldn’t have happened at a better time as I was desperately homesick for the Old North State which unlike Florida did have a fair heap of colonial history to choose from. Dr Colbourn and I had gotten to talking about our mutual love of British comedy (after all, he was Australian and had emigrated to England before coming over to America) as well as history and he invited me to his smaller but no less impressive office in Philips Hall after he’d returned to his true love of teaching and let Dr Altman deal with that university presidency stuff.

His office could have been a library unto itself…massive wooden bookcases on one wall filled to the brim with his personal collection of history books. He headed for a particular spot and pulled four or five books out of the stacks and suggested that if I wanted a taste of home, those books would do the trick and he’d appreciate my ideas on them.

That would be the genesis of a four page assignment that ended up becoming a 32 page comparison and contrast between the Regulator Movements of Colonial North and South Carolina. I’ve still got that manuscript in The Nerdery as a reminder of when things seemed darkest, a good friend can push you in the right direction to put your mood in a better place.

A couple of weeks later, I returned the books to Dr Colbourn who flipped through this larger than expected paper with an occasional tap of his trademark tobacco pipe and more than a few smiles along the way and ended his critique with “that was right delightful!”

That was high praise indeed!

The next class comes round and we’re all settling in for our usual lecture which always started with Dr Colbourn’s observations on the events of the day and their relevance to history. You always knew when the lecture was going to start in earnest because he’d always look us over and ask “is there any more business we need to transact?”

The phrase came, I’m ready with pen and paper to start taking notes like mad and the next thing he says is that due to some faculty something-or-another the previous evening, he was a bit at loose ends in terms of preparation for today’s class.

OK, rather unusual as he was *ALWAYS* prepared. *ALWAYS*. Must have been a heck of a mixer, eh?

But then my blood went ice cold when he mentioned that in spite of his lack of preparation, the class would be in good hands for the next hour learning about the similarities and differences between two identically named movements right before the outbreak of hostilities between the colonies and England.

I truly loathed public speaking. It terrified me enough that I’d often feel anxious enough that I’d wish I had the wits to think of Doug’s solution in “The Cutting Edge” to combat nerves before a big game involving having two helmets at the bench. One for the first ten minutes and one for the rest of the game after the nerves had their customary effect upon the gastrointestinal system.

Dr Colbourn *KNEW* I loathed public speaking. He knew I would be self-conscious as hell about it.

I suspect he also knew what I was thinking about his ancestry and other choice phrasings as the betrayal became obvious when he waved that paper in front of the class and pointed to the person who was going to give them the details on the pages within.

Bridget Jones has an expression on her face as she draws out a very notorious word. I’ll spare you the actual word but yes, I was thinking it and was seriously rocking Alan Shepard’s prayer as well.

Dr Colbourn retires to the back of the room and lets me have the lectern where my paper was sitting and gods below, the first five to ten minutes were sheer torture and I honestly was looking for the rubbish bin more than a couple of times.

But then a curious thing happened…I started warming to my subject to the point I left the paper and lectern behind and moved in the space between it and the first row and just delivered the oral defence of a lifetime complete with my arms flapping about as if I were an albatross ready to take flight.

Next thing I know, we’ve hit the hour and I’ve still got a tonne of stuff to deliver and now I’ve got a classroom full of students who are begging me to stay on for another hour and finish the story.

I looked up at Dr Colbourn who was leaning back in his chair with the biggest smile I’d seen on anything other than the Cheshire Cat. He gives me a small nod, a thumbs up that no one else can see and then makes it clear he’d like nothing else than for me to give the class what they want.

Another hour goes by and I’m finally done with my impromptu lecture and we’re back in his office just down the corridor after I’d just gotten a standing ovation from everyone in attendance.

Next thing I know, I’m wrapped up in this big bear hug and he’s telling me that any time I need to “go home”, just come on into the office and he’ll provide the inspiration.

He knew.

He knew darned full well I would have never willingly defended that paper in front of a bunch of my peers so he made sure there wasn’t a choice in it.

He also knew darned full well that once I warmed to my subject, there was no way I wasn’t going to finish it without doing it justice.

I’ll probably never be a fan of public speaking. Even recently when I was working the microphone as a stadium announcer for Katie’s high school lacrosse team and was happily anonymous in the press box, it was still in the back of my mind to try not to screw things up too badly.

But I have Dr Colbourn to thank for showing me in probably one of the most brutal ways I’ve ever experienced that I might well not enjoy public speaking and performance art but that I can do the job better than I ever dared to imagine.

After graduation, I would make a point of dropping in on him and true to form on Sunday, I’d find him happily reading his Sunday Times and FT and it’d be like the years had not passed at all.

Sadly, Dr Colbourn is no longer with us but I can assure you that his memory and spirit live on in my heart and soul. I think he would be more than pleased. 🙂

Dr John Leeson – Professor of Computer Science

I met Dr Leeson for the first time after I’d switched majors to Computer Science and had gotten a couple of the early programming courses out of the way.

At that time, there were three more advanced classes that were intended to be taken in order as they built upon the techniques learnt in the prerequisite class. It looks like there’s been some noticeable changes in the curriculum since but the preferred sequence was this:

• Intro to Discrete Structures
• Discrete Structures
• Programming Languages I

The only problem was that scheduling meant I’d have to take the third class first to have a chance at graduating even close to on-time.

After the first week of classes where I was completely lost at sea, I was beginning to really wonder if this was such a good idea after all.

Fortunately, like most professors, Dr Leeson had a set of office hours on offer for anyone to walk through the door.

I asked him for his suggestions on how to best handle the quandary I’d found myself in and we decided we’d try to push on and he was more than willing to take whatever time was needed to ensure I understood the material as best as I was able.

For the rest of the semester, I’d be in his office pretty much every time he opened the door for his office hours and very rarely did I have company. He was *SO* patient as I was trying desperately to make sense of some very complicated techniques without having the usual base of knowledge and there were a few times we actually went a bit past the end of his office hours until he was satisfied my questions had been answered.

The mid-term examination arrives and I could tell about halfway through completing it that this grade was going to be an utter disaster no matter my best intentions or effort.

The thing you learned quickly (and often loved!) was that Dr Leeson had a seriously quirky sense of humour. He was fond of cracking jokes in class but you dreaded when he’d bring out another facet of his personality…the Magic 8-ball.

As soon as that thing came out of his bag, we all knew we were completely screwed because he started talking to the Magic 8-ball as if we were not there and the Magic 8-ball was not giving him or us encouraging answers or reasons to have any hope of succeeding in the class.

The next session in his office started out with “should I go ahead and drop now?” and Dr Leeson assured me that even though the grade wasn’t great (and that was being very charitable!), he felt I should keep on pushing and that we’d get to where we need to be by the end of the semester together.

That was a hell of a leap of faith but after all the extra hours he’d poured into trying to help me understand the material, there was no way I could bring myself to bail out and so with that decision taken (for good or ill), we got back to deciphering the latest lecture.

That second half of the semester was one of the hardest ones I had during my entire time at UCF…I worked my tuchus off and most of the effort was devoted to trying to survive Programming Languages. Toward the end, I would have been thrilled with a D.

It’s time to sit the final examination and the previous few weeks in Dr Leeson’s office had given me some faint measure of hope that the material was finally starting to make real sense and I was really getting it. Dr Leeson was of the same opinion and said as much that he was very happy with where I had arrived compared to when the semester had started.

The final did seem much easier than the disaster of a mid-term and I was thinking I might have been fortunate enough to pull the overall course grade to a middling C. So imagine my surprise (check that…*OUTRIGHT SHOCK*!) when I opened the transcript mailer and saw the A for the final grade.

You would think that even the dimmest student would do the double-take, thank whatever gods would listen for their kindness, and carry on.

Yeah. That didn’t happen.

Curiosity tends to have deleterious effects upon felines and relatively new computer science students and you can imagine Dr Leeson being somewhat surprised to see me once again gracing his doorstep during office hours along with another classmate who had taken the class in the same section that previous semester right after me.

I told him that I was in no way trying to look a gift horse in the mouth and that I was appreciative well beyond my ability to express in coherent English but that I was also utterly confused because whilst his course’s subject matter was very complex, I hadn’t completely lost my ability at doing sums and figuring out average values.

He took a look out in the waiting area and asked me to hold that thought for a minute and would I mind if he dealt with the other student and then he could clear up my confusion.

That student and I swapped places and about ten minutes later, Dr Leeson pops his head out the door and asks me to come in and take the seat which had become my second home that previous semester.

He then turns to the other student and asks him some rather difficult questions such as “did you read the syllabus where office hours were clearly indicated?” and “did you not think you should avail yourself of the extra help on offer?”

Awkward doesn’t begin to describe how being there to witness this felt.

It got much worse for that poor student when Dr Leeson points in my direction and notes that he can count on only a couple of fingers the number of times that semester I wasn’t in that office sitting in that very seat taking full advantage of the extra time. That’s when he dropped the big bomb and explained to that other student that not only had I worked my heiney off that entire semester, I’d done it the hardest way possible taking the third class first without the advantages the other student had by doing it in the customary order.

This is when Dr Leeson gave a smile that to this day still sends shivers down my spine, pulls out Magic 8-ball and starts having a conversation along the lines of asking Magic 8-ball what it would do for a student that failed a mid-term examination badly but pulled a high B on the final after a semester like the one I had.

Apparently Magic 8-ball gave him the assurance it needed to because Dr Leeson made it clear that he was perfectly happy with both final grades as they reflected the effort and learning that had occurred during the semester and that he wasn’t inclined to change either of them.

The other student walked out the door without a word.

I looked at Dr Leeson and got a much more pleasant smile and he simply asked “does that clear up your confusion?”

Yes, professor. It most certainly did.

The irony was that as brutal as taking Programming Languages first was that semester, it was a huge blessing in disguise. The first two classes in the sequence are very heavy on theory which I’ll confess is not a passion of mine. But when it came time to take those classes, I had already seen the practical implications and implementation of the theoretical concepts which made understanding the theory way easier than had we done it the other way round.

Somehow Dr Leeson had figured out what I never had up to that point: I often learn quicker and more efficiently by seeing how something works in practice and that it’s useful and then working out the why and the theory when there’s a practical need to do so than trying to go from theory to practical application. Yes it’s backwards as hell but it’s what works for me so there! 🙂

The only other “class” I would have with Dr Leeson was a one credit-hour independent study during my final semester (the one where I took the six hours of accounting that is easily the one I’ve used way more than any of the computer science classes I’d taken) where I would document all six steps of the OS Simulator (OSSIM) project where you were literally simulating a CPU and all sorts of peripherals and writing the operating system (like Windows or MacOS) that would make them all work together.

OSSIM was Dr Leeson’s baby and he was very proud of how tough and comprehensive it was.

Very few classes made it through stage four. Even fewer would make it to stage six.

And by the time I graduated, only 30 students had ever completely implemented every part of the multiple CPU scheduling algorithms in stage six and completed the project in it’s entirety.

He had been saving up this particular independent study project for a year knowing exactly who he wanted to write the most comprehensive reference to OSSIM which would become an essential study guide and knowledge base so that more students would successfully complete it.

The 31st student to successfully implement every facet of OSSIM.

That independent study would become “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to OSSIM” and I have no idea how many students ended up using a copy of that rather thick document I’d written that semester. What I do know is that in the couple of years after I graduated when I would visit Dr Leeson and my old haunts in the computer labs that I’d see more than a few copies of it laying about next to computer terminals where the students were working their tails off to become the OS and one with the machine.

If only they knew that their audience was the one who wrote it. 🙂

So there you have it…

We’ve finally made it to the end of this three-part love letter to the most memorable teachers and professors who poured so much of their talent and love into their students to unlock the potential of a successful future.

Thirty to forty years on, it seems like a lifetime ago and whilst there are certainly things I’d have rather done differently with the benefit of experience, I’m happy and content with the education I’ve received and the life long love of learning and the occasional debate and Socratic method application that those 18 years of intense study and work propelled me into the working world and a good life.

And so I’ll leave it here with a quote that is the common thread amongst everyone I’ve mentioned in this series:

Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.

Japanese Proverb