Tennessee Tech established its Computer Science Department 40 years ago, when the discipline remained more academic curiosity than the economic and technological force it represents today.
The department will celebrate the anniversary this week. Computer Science Department Chair Gerald Gannod said the program grew out of Tennessee Tech’s Mathematics Department. That followed a path common among universities as computer science emerged as its own academic discipline.
“Now of course it’s a very big industry that impacts pretty much every discipline here on campus, everything that we do in our lives,” Gannod said. “And so back then it was an academic, I’ll call it oddity or curiosity, and certainly now it’s turned into a huge industry.”
Gannod said the department’s 1986 beginnings predated many technologies and specialties now central to computing. Gannod pointed to the internet, modern software development, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing as areas that either did not exist in their current form or carried little of today’s prominence.
Gannod said the direction of the industry, however, already pointed toward greater influence.
“I think that if I were to tell a professor that change would be rapid, that the impact of this discipline would be far-reaching, I don’t think a professor back then would be surprised by that,” Gannod said. “Because the trajectory of the discipline, the trajectory of the industry, was already on the upswing.”
Gannod said companies such as Microsoft and IBM already pushed technology deeper into business and industry during that period. The surprise for someone looking ahead from 1986, he said, likely comes from the scale rather than the direction of the change.
“I think there would be surprise on the scale of our growth, especially the scale of our growth over the past 10 years, in which you know we’ve more than doubled in the number of undergraduates that are in the Computer Science department,” Gannod said. “We’ve more than fivefold increased the number of graduate students in our program and have had just a nice run over these past 10 years even of growth and impact and visibility.”
Gannod said that growth produced another milestone during the past year. Gannod said Tennessee Tech graduated more Computer Science students than ever before, estimating the undergraduate total at between 180 and 190.
Gannod said the career path for those graduates also looks much different from the one available when the department began. A computer science graduate in 1986 might have expected to work for a major technology company such as IBM. Today’s graduates find opportunities throughout healthcare, finance, education, entertainment and other industries.
Gannod said the department’s alumni now include leaders in computing and cybersecurity as well as graduates whose work influences research, products and healthcare.
“They’ve impacted the research that we do, they’ve impacted the products that we build, and they’ve impacted how healthcare is done,” Gannod said. “So the—it’s pretty far-reaching.”
Gannod said the next chapter brings another period of change. Gannod pointed to artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, privacy and quantum computing as forces that could reshape both computer science and its role across Tennessee Tech.
Tennessee Tech hosts the Computer Science Department’s 40th anniversary celebration November 6 at the Putnam County Convention Center. Alumnus Mark Rigney serves as keynote speaker, and alumni representing different decades of the program participate in a fireside chat.
The celebration also includes the first presentation of the Mark Boshart and Martha Kosa Scholarship to students.