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Bruce Danner ends 30 years of service
Reviewing Bruce Danner’s Rose-Hulman career is more than a glimpse at one
man’s personal history. It also provides an account of how the Institute came to
embrace and implement one of the most proliferating technologies of the century.
Danner retired this fall after 30 years of service to Rose-Hulman. During his three
decades, he served 18 years as head of the computing center and 12 years in the classroom
as an assistant and associate professor of physics.
A list of Danner’s accomplishments reflects the growth of computing at Rose-Hulman.
It takes you from batch card processing on a single computer to a networked campus
populated with laptops.
Danner’s career started upon receiving his Ph.D. from Ohio University. He arrived at
Rose-Hulman in 1968 as an assistant professor of physics. Like any good aspiring faculty
member, he became involved in faculty committee work. One of those assignments was
chairman of the academic computing committee in the early 1970s.
In 1975, then an associate professor, Danner was asked to serve as acting director of the
computing center. He was appointed as director in 1976 and continued to teach one physics
class. Gradually the classroom had to be put on the career sidetrack because of the
growing and changing nature of computing at Rose-Hulman.
The mid-1970s saw Danner overseeing a department with one mainframe computer, two graphics
terminals and three teletypes. “We thought we really had something because those
teletypes could print 10 to 15 characters per second,” Danner recalled.
If the technology appears spartan by today’s standards, Danner’s staff could not
even field enough people for a basketball team. His early days in the computing center
included one other professional and a graduate student.
During a recent interview, Danner fondly recalled the names of people who came on board
during the growth of the computing center. Students played a key role as workers and
managers in the development of computing at Rose-Hulman. “If we didn’t have
those guys, this place would never have had the computing capabilities that we did,”
Danner said.
Under Danner’s leadership, the computing center moved from batch card processing on a
single machine to networked desktop workstations. In 1984-85, the computing center became
involved in the campus adopting desktop personal computers.
As computing power increased, so did its incorporation into the Rose-Hulman curriculum.
Mathematics classes and an integrated program for freshmen adopted the use of the
computer. This meant Danner and his staff had to be involved in designing and building of
classrooms for computers necessary to meet the curriculum demands. Faculty members were
adopting different operating systems and applications software, and the computing center
had to continually stay abreast of these changes so that they could properly serve the
campus.
Change became the status quo for Danner’s computing center career. In the early
1990s, a shift began where students and faculty could use computers at their office and
residence hall desks that were networked together and connected to the internet. Many of
the dedicated desktop computer classrooms that Danner and his team had installed during
the 1980s were converted with the adoption of laptops in 1995.
Danner found the rewards and challenges of his job intertwined. When asked to recount the
biggest challenge, he was quick to cite “no money and limited numbers of
personnel.” When asked to name the biggest reward in his work, he recalled the
ability of the computing center staff to “just make it work” amidst those
limitations. “We looked back in amazement several times at the number of things we
were able to accomplish with limited resources. We did it with a lot of bright dedicated
students and a hardworking, professional staff.”
Of course, Danner’s service to Rose-Hulman goes beyond computer cable and software.
Teaching was what brought him to campus. “I genuinely enjoyed it,” Danner said
of his classroom experiences. “If I could provide some insight that would let
students know more than I did at their age, I feel it was a worthy accomplishment. That
goes for all Rose faculty. They teach because they like it. Another plus was that we were
small enough that we could know all the students individually. It was fun to get back to
teaching when I stopped being computer center director in 1994.”
Love of teaching has Danner “easing into retirement.” Although officially
retired after fall quarter, he returned as an adjunct during the winter to teach a lab.
— by Bryan Taylor
 
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