It’s not unusual for the staff here at Herzing to get messages from former students thanking us for the education or support they received during their time with us. But we don’t normally hear from alumni who were around for the earliest days of the college’s existence!
Bob Orsini completed computer programming training with us in the late 1960s and went on to build a decades-long career in information technology. He dropped by the Montreal campus recently to say hello, so we took the opportunity to talk to him about how his experiences at Herzing shaped the course of his career.
Here are the highlights of that conversation.
Q. What prompted you to come into the college the other day?
Bob: Well, I was going through my documentation and I found the original books that I had through the course. There’s nothing I can do with them now—that was 57 years ago! So I figured I’d get in touch with somebody at Herzing.
I called them up and I said I graduated from you guys in ’68 and I have the books; would you like to have them? He said sure. So I went in and spoke to a young lady and she gave me a little tour. One of the guys I met was shocked by the books cause they were from so long ago.
Q. What was the college like when you attended?
Bob: The school was in the old Montreal Forum. I would go there twice a week, six hours total. There were maybe 15 or 20 of us in that room. A few people were very gung-ho about it, just like me.
I remember the gentleman coming to my home because at the time I was under 21 and I couldn’t sign to pay for the training. He had to come and get my dad’s signature. It was totally different than today. So the guy came and I remember signing the documents and he gave me the books and then I started the following week.
Q. What piqued your interest in programming?
Bob: I used to work at Montreal Locomotive Works down at the east end of Montreal. They did the turbo trains in 1967. I started in the mail room, then went on to the payroll department. Beside the payroll department was the data processing department. I used to watch the guy and I thought gee, that’s interesting. I’d like to get into that. So I went over and introduced myself and said I’d like to learn. I started on an IBM System/360 Model 20 machine, which was a card system.
I enrolled at Herzing at the same time. So I used to go to work from 4 to 12 on Mondays. Tuesdays I went to school from 6:30 to 9:30, then to work from 11 til 7 the next day. And then I had to do my homework that day and be back for work at 4:00. And then again Thursday, same thing. That went on for a whole year.
Q. What kinds of things did you learn in the program?
Bob: I learned the basics in the program: all kinds of different machines, how to approach a project, how to do flow charts and diagrams, programming and logic and all that stuff.
Q. Can you walk us through your career path and how it has evolved over the years?
Bob: After Montreal Locomotive Works, I went to work for United Aircraft, which is Pratt and Whitney. They had NCR CRAM, which was 256 plastic cards that get dropped into a drum and read. Plus we had all kinds of tape drives all over the place. I worked there for a couple years and thought maybe I should start getting into some kind of programming stuff.
So I got into another area. I worked for Loyola College in their data processing. They had a UNIVAC 9300 system. I was in charge of the staff there, and that was a lot of fun. I was there for quite a while.
Then I went into the needle trade at Croydon Manufacturing. That’s where I started writing code and writing programs, but I would not have been able to do that had I not had the logic of the course that I took.
I never left data processing or computer operations or programming. I’ve worked with multiple companies. I’ve been from San Francisco all the way to Europe for Helly Hansen, who was one of our customers. That was challenging.
For the last 20+ years I’ve been self-employed with a bunch of contracts. I’ll be 75 in a few weeks and it might be time to retire.
Q. Were there any pivotal moments in your career where you felt especially grateful for the education you got at Herzing?
Bob: The tools I learned at Herzing helped me immensely at all of my experiences at every company. As each step went on, I said what do I do here? And I would look at the books a little bit, and it got me further ahead in my career. I got promoted very often.
Q. You’ve witnessed the entire evolution of computing, from mainframes to PCs to the internet. How did you adapt and continue learning as technology kept evolving?
Bob: I took a few other courses over the years on Visual Basic, Java, things like that.
It came easy for me because of the training I got at Herzing. The diagrams and the charts change, but the logic on how you approach it never changes. It’s always: what can I do to make the user happy? And how do I approach this in a simple way that they will understand? That’s what I did on every job, no matter what it was.
Q. What advice would you give to today’s students who are just starting out in tech?
Bob: I would say, first of all, make sure you’re in the right area. That’s number one. Second, ensure that you’re dedicated to this and this is what you want to do. Make sure you’re dedicated, and the results will come.
Q. Finishing in 1968 makes you one of the first graduates Herzing ever had! Looking back, what does that mean to you personally?
Bob: At the time, I was only 18 and I said to myself: This looks like the future for me. I think I made the right choice. Programming was brand spanking new in ‘68. I got home and told my mother and father that I think this is going to bring me a very big benefit. Computers were in their infancy then, but I felt like they were the future. And here we are.
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