Bob Hoag's Home Page

Note:  For about eight or nine years, I served as the coordinator of the Computer Science and Information Technology Discipline of the Business and Information Technology Division of Delta College. I look forward to working with Bill Schueneman who has assumed that responsibility. Please address any questions regarding CST to Mr. Schueneman at lwschuen@delta.edu.

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Hello!  My name is Bob Hoag. I retired on 7/01/07 as Professor of Computer Science and Information Technology in the Business and Information Technology Division of Delta College at University Center, Michigan. I am now Professor Emeritus and teach part-time.  I live in Flint; my wife recently passed away. I have two grown daughters and four grandchildren, Nathan who is 21, Rachel who is almost 19, Andrew who is 18, and Emily who is 16 -- pictures are available  :-)

My hobbies include music (piano and vocal), stained glass (but not much time lately), reading (Agatha Christie, a favorite), watching some TV, and, yes, playing PC games (older types: Galaxian, Freecell) and games on my iPhone.  Grandkids are fun to visit!  I am active in the Byzantine Catholic Church where I serve in the music ministry as a Cantor singing various liturgical services.  I also assist with preparation of the weekly church bulletin using DeskTop Publishing and maintain the church web site using Dreamweaver and Fireworks.

I received an Associate of Science Degree with Honors (Mathematics Major) from Flint Junior College (now known as Mott College) and was awarded the Paul Karr Cup and Student Activities Cup for scholarship and participation in student activities.  I served as President of the Student Government at FJC -- a wonderful experience.

I received a Bachelor of Arts Degree with Distinction (Mathematics Major) from The University of Michigan -- Go Blue!

I assumed I would obtain advanced degrees and teach college math -- instead, I was recruited by IBM and had a most rewarding career as a Marketing Representative and Advisory Systems Engineer in various IBM Branch Offices in Michigan for 29 years.

In the summer of 1991, I was at Delta College on IBM business when I received a message that the "rumors about early retirement" were true and that I qualified.  I spoke with a dean about teaching opportunities and requirements in general and was offered the chance to teach one class part-time as a Lecturer to see if I liked it as much as I thought I would.  I made the very difficult decision to take advantage of the opportunity and I retired from IBM.  I ended up being "retired" for less than a month.

Two weeks before that Fall 1991 semester, the dean called me to say that a full-time instructor had to leave Delta suddenly for family reasons.  I ended up teaching more than a full load of classes -- SIX CLASSES!  I don't think my students were aware that I stayed up until 2:00 A.M. reading the chapters I would be lecturing on the next day.  Obviously, it was a tough but necessary experience.  And, it convinced me that I had made the correct decision.  How fortunate -- to leave a career that I truly enjoyed and end up in one that I loved even more!

When I was hired, Delta College was very interested in my professional background in business.  However, I was required to obtain a Master's Degree.  So, after being away from school for all those years (even though I did teach lots of classes at IBM), I found myself in the classroom -- as an instructor at Delta and as a student at Ferris State University.  I could certainly identify with my students who "crammed" for an exam.  Since I was giving my students grades, I felt compelled to get the best grades that I could -- and wound up with my first 4.0!  In December 1995, I received the degree of Master of Science in Information Systems Management with Highest Distinction from FSU.  It was a most momentous day for our family; my oldest daughter received her Masters Degree from CMU that very same day -- she beat me by four hours.

For my thesis at FSU, I wrote a text book and accompanying instruction materials for our Delta class, CIS-114, Computer Fundamentals/IBM.  Later, I rewrote this to migrate from DOS-based to Windows 95.  Other responsibilities at Delta included being the editor of the CST-133W Lab Packet which was published each summer and used throughout the succeeding year.  I also wrote a textbook and accompanying teaching materials for a developmental class, CST-091 -- and have migrated that to three developmental classes that replaced CST-091 --- CST-091, CST-093, and CST-094.

I completed my ninth year as Coordinator of the CST Discipline which took a considerable amount of my time. In preparation for retirement, I stepped down as coordinator. Mrs. Felicia Peters accepted that responsibility at the end of the Winter 2006 semester -- she recently took over the responsibilities of being chair of the Business and Information Technology Division. Mr. Bill Schueneman is now CST Coordinator. Other past responsibilities included serving as a member of the E-Learning Committee and other committees.  These groups look for better ways to serve our students and business and industry in our community.  I have also been very active in the Great Teachers Movement.  So, there's more to teaching than just being in the classroom.  I served Delta College in a variety of ways -- this was important to Delta and maybe even more important to me.

In my last year as a full-time professor, I was especially excited about my teaching opportunities.  First, I taught three sections of the Computer Concepts and Competencies course as eLearning -- over the Internet. I hoped that this would help students who have difficulty fitting Delta's 15-week semester schedule into their own time requirements. I also taught CST-180, C++ Programming. And, I developed and taught CST-186, Introduction to Game and Simulation Programming for the first time in Winter 2007. I sure did not "coast" to retirement!

Years ago, we received a grant from the Michigan Career Development Center to develop competency-based curricula for Information Technology for use in educational institutions across the state.  Area career centers and businesses graciously worked as partners with us to help us define what competencies are needed by our students to be successful in Information Technology careers.  We then developed curricula to address these needs -- several new Academic Certificates and Associate Degrees are now available to students. CST faculty completed the creation of new courses needed by these new student offerings.  We have been very excited about this new degree area that was first available in the Fall 2006 catalog, Information Security and Technology. I've worked closely with Felicia Peters and Bill Schueneman on this and think it's an excellent addition to our CST area. Felicia and I worked long and hard on a request to the Federal Government National Security Agency to have our new program of study certified at the national level --- in Spring 2006 we heard that we were successful! I am looking forward to seeing how the CST discipline continues to evolve -- hopefully for the best for our students!  All these activities kept me busy at Delta.

A Conference for Michigan Community College Educators is held each fall called "Trends in Occupational Studies." I was pleased (and humbled) to receive an "Outstanding Occupational Educator" award at the 2003 conference. What a nice surprise! Then, I was part of a Delta team that won an "Outstanding Occupational Educator Team" award at the 2006 conference. And, as I began to think of retiring from Delta, it was wonderful to be promoted to Full Professor in July 2005.

But, students were always the most important part of this career.  I continue to welcome suggestions from students on how I can better my service to them and to Delta College.

-- Bob Hoag