In 1991, I had been working for AT&T for 5 years when I learned of an opportunity to teach at the university level in a Visiting Professor Program that our company sponsored. The program had engineers from our company go to a Historically Black College/University (HBCU) and teach for 1 to 2 years. Our company would continue to pay the salary for the person but your job during that time was teaching at the school.
At that time I had been providing some training in the workplace on a couple different subjects (in addition to my regular software development assignments) and I really enjoyed the teaching. I was still single at the time and I spent some time thinking about the opportunity and I decided to go for it. I was excited about the idea of teaching though it scared me since developing a curriculum for a college course was something that I have never done before. The program was pretty flexible and my plans were to teach some courses in computer science and math.
I submitted my name to the program and I was accepted but it still required approval from 4 levels above me in my own organization (since they would be paying me during this time). There were 10 to 12 different schools in the program and I was originally told that I would be going to Southern University in Baton Rouge or Prairie View A&M University located just NW of Houston. I was excited about the possibility of living in Louisiana as I love the food down there -- it always comes back to the food for me. :) I later learned that I would be going to Prairie View for the 1991-1992 school year to start (most of the program participants decided to stay for a second year after the first was completed).
My supervisor and department head signed off their approvals pretty quickly and then the form sat on my lab director's desk for a little while. I then learned that he also approved it and that it had gone to his boss (VP level) for the final approval. It sat there for some time and then our company released their quarterly results and the numbers were bad. We learned that we would be laying off people for one of the first times that anyone could remember (the AT&T monopoly had been gone for 7 years at this point). My application was then denied by our VP due to the financial situation. I was much more upset at that time that some of my friends were losing their jobs then I was about the door shutting on the opportunity to teach.
In the end I am very happy about how things worked out. I met my future wife Ann during the next year at AT&T and we started dating. Teaching at some level might still be in my future but for now I am content with where God has placed me. But aside from the personal side I sometimes do wonder how things would have turned out if things had gone the other way 20 years ago.
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3 comments:
If I ever do teach in the future it will likely be in math as that topic does not change whereas computer science has evolved so much over the past 20 years and I no longer feel like I am on the leading edge as I did back then.
I think God would have found a way for Ann and you to cross paths. And I firmly belive you would have stayed on top of teh leading edge if that had become you career. ;) I can not believe it was 15 years ago, I remember us visiting about this possibilty and what the reaction of others had been. :)
Jenny, it was actually 20 years ago (time flies). I don't really remember the reaction of others but maybe I didn't hear everything that was being said though I can imagine. :)
Actually if I had gone into teaching I think that I would have stayed more current with the technology then I have with my job (where we don't change how we do things as quickly as the technology has changed).
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