Catching up with ...
Donald Bagert played academic games for Brother Martin H.S. in New Orleans from 1969-1973. His greatest achievement was winning the national Senior Equations championship three times since at that time sophomores competed in Senior Division.Don Bagert
He went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Texas A & M. He has taught software engineering for many years at Texas Tech, where his intellectual competition bent has led him to coach the school's computer programming team in national and international competition. He is the first person to become a licensed software engineer under a new Texas law and he has pushed to make software engineering licenses a nationwide requirement.
We asked Don to share some of his memories of Academic Games, and to fill us in on his life since then. Here is what he had to say.
Academic Games Memories
When I was a sophomore in high school, I had pretty low self-esteem. I had poor social skills, was a whiner, and had been on crutches for almost a year to due injuries resulting from a car accident. My Academic Games record had been pretty unimpressive too...but somewhere along the line, I found out that Equations was something that I was good at. It was something that stimulated my mind...the mathematics, the strategy, the competition.I remembered very well the 1971 Academic Olympics at Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. I hadn't been on a plane since I was a baby, had hardly ever seen snow, and had never been that far north. The competition was a blur to me...I didn't expect to do very well, since sophomores competed in the senior division at the Olympics then, while I had played in the junior division in New Orleans. Somehow, I won the Equations senior national championship...I was not quite 15 years and 2 months old. My self-esteem had improved somewhat...too bad it took many more years for my social skills to improve and my whining to decrease =)
Events from two more Olympics come to mind. In 1973, we were at Kent State University, around the time of the third anniversary of the deaths of the student protesters there...We stayed in a dorm, and one day, while we were playing cards in the lounge on one floor, a couple of pretty coeds came in. They asked us why we were there, and we told them...they said they were curious because this dorm had been closed since the riots after the shootings in 1970.
Well, we had all noticed that the elevator didn't go up to the top floors...so some of us decided to walk up to those floors. What we found was eye-opening...burned doors and pillows, and lots of graffiti on the walls...profane and profound at the same time. Certainly it was a new life experience for a 17-year old like me.
The last Olympics that I can remember something significant was also the last one I was at, in 1980...By that time, I was a faculty instructor at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), and was helping with the Academic Games team at a magnet middle school in Lafayette, who won the Louisiana State Championship in Equations that year. Bob Allen got Leslie Nielsen (who has just appeared in "Airplane!", but was more known then for his drama) to do his one-man show on Clarence Darrow for everyone. There was also a private reception for him with the coaches attending, so I got to meet him. (Just to show how everything eventually comes around, Mr. Nielsen is doing that one-man show again - see http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/1123ent1darrow.htm)
As far as what Academic Games has meant to me..as I said before, it gave me the confidence to know that if I apply myself, I can accomplish anything. That has stayed with me throughout my life. It also gave me a great understanding of problem solving and academic competition, both of which have stayed with me throughout my career.
Since Academic Games
Here is what I have been doing since Academic Games: I received a B.S. in Engineering from Tulane University in 1977, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) in 1979, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 1986. I have been teaching in the classroom continuously since January 1978 (at 21 years old): first as a TA and later a faculty instructor at USL, a faculty instructor at A&M, and then as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Northeast Louisiana University (now the University of Louisiana at Monroe). I am currently Professor and Associate Chair of Computer Science at Texas Tech University, where I have worked for the past eleven years. My research primarily focuses on software engineering methodologies and process improvement. I founded and am the Co-Director of the Software Engineering Research, Training, and Education Center (SERTEC) at Texas Tech, and am the coordinator of their new Master's of Science in Software Engineering program there. I have been the Principal Investigator for several grants from several agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the Defense Information Systems Agency.I am also one of the primary co-authors of the recently-released Guidelines for Software Engineering Education, which was developed by the Working Group on Software Engineering Education and Training, a think-tank of sorts in that area. I co-edit the FASE electronic newsletter on software engineering education and training, which reaches almost 900 subscribers in over 50 countries. In March 2000, I will become the Steering Committee Chair for the Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training.
Since 1997, I have served as a member of the Software Engineering Advisory Committee to the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. On September 4, 1998, I became the first Professional Engineer in Software Engineering in both Texas and the United States. I am also a senior member of IEEE, the electrical engineering professional society.
I have received several teaching awards, including the Texas Tech President's Excellence in Teaching Award and the Texas Tech College of Engineering Halliburton Education Foundation Award of Excellence. I am also a charter member of the Texas Tech Teaching Academy, and have taught honors courses during the last five years.
I just recently finished 13 years as a programming team coach/advisor, first at NLU and then at Texas Tech, which has qualified for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals five during that period, coming in as high as third there. I had teams finish in the top four at the regional level 10 times during those 13 years, including two first and three second place finishes. I am also finishing seven years as a ICPC official, including the last three years as the Director of Regional Contests. (I often thought of Academic Games when doing contest work, especially at the World Finals.)
At Texas A&M, I got involved with the Catholic Student Association
(CSA) there, and helped found the Aggie Awakening retreat program in 1983;
it has had 57 retreats and is still going strong today. When I came to
Texas Tech, I became the CSA faculty advisor, and helped found an Awakening
program there. In fact, Raider Awakening is celebrating its tenth anniversary
with a reunion this very weekend.
