Today I celebrate 20 years as a full-time professor here at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Guadalajara. I actually arrived here on campus for the August 1995 semester as a sessional professor and taught for 2 years before I left to join Object Technology International (at that time recently purchased by IBM) to work on the first release of VisualAge for Java which became the base for Eclipse.

Read on below for more details.

My first semester in 1995 was actually teaching high school mathematics, four sections of Math 3 (in English) which was Algebra if my memory serves me. I still have contact with many of those first students and some are working with me here on campus today. Our campus has both a high school (grades 10 to 12) together with the undergraduate and graduate students in the same location so I was working on this same campus for that semester.

My second semester was an adventure where I moved to the university to teach four sections of mathematics (Math 2 for Social Sciences, Math 2 for Engineers, Math 3 for Engineers and Probability and Statistics) as well as a Programming Languages class. That was a fairly heavy load but it gets more interesting.

I had taken some conversational Spanish classes before moving to México and my French learnt in high school was fading so my communication skills were low but I could get by. Sometime in late January I spent the week looking for my boss (Oscar Morales) and the secretary kept telling me that he wasn’t there. After various days, Rebecca switched to English to tell me: “Ken, Oscar no longer works on campus. He left”. In addition to his departure, the only “planta” in our computer department also left to pursue a consulting job and there were courses in need of rescue. So I added three computing courses to my load: Computing 1, Computing 2 and Data Structures 1. So I was teaching 8 sections of 8 distinct courses. I set my record in the first semester here. I actually ended up rescuing a few other classes over my career as both a sessional lecturer and full-time professor as the years went on.

I do not have many pictures from those early years but I found this photo from August 2004 from my Methods of Analysis and Design course. Perhaps some of these students (I remember most of their names and they stay in contact) will enjoy a blast from the past. The two in the front are actually faculty with us now.

Students in my Methods of Analysis and Design course, August 2004.

"Students, August 2004." flickr photo by kenbauer https://flickr.com/photos/ken_bauer/18423607349 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license.
Methods of Analysis and Design course, August 2004.

Students, August 2004. flickr photo by kenbauer shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license
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4 thoughts on “20 Years

  1. Almost right! It was me who asked for your help since when Oscar morales left, I became the chair of the computer science department and we met: you saved me and that was the great beginning for all who, like me, are pleased to know your professionalism.
    Congrats for these 20 years as a full time GREAT professor!!!

    1. Ken Bauer says:

      True story my friend, sometimes that feels like it was just yesterday :)

      Saludos!

  2. Ha ha, love the pic! I still remember that class. In retrospect, it was probably the one that thought me the most about what software engineering really was.

    Congratulations on your 20 years Ken! Thanks for always caring. And for teaching me that source control existed :)

    1. Ken Bauer says:

      Thanks Ramiro and that was *way* before we had GitHub making this easy technically.

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