Scot Drysdale, the College’s first computer science professor, taught his final class this past winter, though he will continue to conduct research, serve on department committees and supervise thesis projects until mid-2018.
Drysdale was the first person hired as a computer science professor, computer science professor Thomas Cormen said. The two have known each other since 1992, when Cormen first came to Dartmouth. At the time, then-College President John Kemeny had planned out a tentative computer science major. Drysdale was hired to build up a department and expand computer science teaching.
“Before I was hired, mostly what they did was have some mini courses that let them learn a little about how to use a computer, but they weren’t studying this whole field of computer science,” Drysdale said. “When I was hired it was to expand this so we would offer computer science courses on a much more regular basis.”
Originally, he was one of a very small group that worked on course development and hiring for the computer science department. He said that he and his colleagues tried to expand the department as a subgroup of the mathematics department.
Drysdale valued support and encouragement for outside research, but he also attended a small liberal art college and appreciated the liberal arts approach. At Knox College, he studied math before moving on to complete a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University.
During his job search, Drysdale interviewed at both large research institutions and smaller liberal arts schools but found the balance between the two to be unique at Dartmouth.
“Dartmouth was the only place that said, ‘We care about teaching and research, and we mean both,’” said Drysdale. “This school seemed to balance the advantages of the small liberal arts college with small classes and individual attention and on the other hand, a high powered research community going on and that appealed to me.”
Drysdale’s research focus is computational geometry, Cormen said. Drysdale said his favorite class to teach is “Algorithms.”
“It’s teaching what I really know about and care about and getting people involved in that,” he said.
When Drysdale arrived there was only one time-sharing computer — it allowed many different people to log on and it would appear as though each person had their own computer. In the early 1980s, the interest in computing grew and the department decided that each student should have a personal computer. The school decided to get Macintosh computers for the students, said Drysdale.
Associate dean of faculty for the sciences and computer science professor David Kotz ’86, who first had Drysdale as a professor and is now his colleague, said Drysdale is a personable man. He attributes Drysdale’s strong leadership qualities and friendliness to his long history as a Dartmouth Outing Club faculty trip leader. He said Drysdale has led more trips than anyone else to this day.
“He’s been one of the best teachers in computer science and arguably in all of arts and sciences for years and years,” Kotz said. “He is very committed to his students and clear at explaining complicated topics.”
In 1994, while Drysdale was on sabbatical in Berlin, the computer science department split from the mathematics department. In early September of that year, the department founding chair Donald Johnson was hiking Mount Cube with his fiancée’s daughter when he had a heart attack and died. The department was very small at the time and Drysdale was the only professor with more than four years of experience at the school. Under these very trying circumstances, Drysdale stepped up to be department chair, Cormen said.
“It was a frenzy for the department and it was a challenge,” Cormen said. “It’s really a credit to Scot that he was able to step in at a very unexpected and a very key time and shepherd everything through.”
Drysdale then stepped down from the position after eight years.
“It was time for someone else to do it,” Drysdale said. “Administration is not my joy. It’s something I was willing to do, and someone had to do it, and I was the one who did it. Different people have different visions, and it was time to let someone else push the department in a different direction.”
Drysdale said the construction of a new computer science building is exciting for the future of the department. The Thayer School of Engineering has plans to construct a new building next to the MacLean Engineering Sciences building that will be split between Thayer and the computer science department. Sudikoff, the current computer science building, was renovated from a mental health hospital, Drysdale said.
“It would be nice to have a new building that’s designed for us the way we like it,” said Drysdale.
The department is also expanding the subjects it covers as well as increasing its student enrollment.
Drysdale said that he is extremely happy with the work that the current chairs of the department have done.
“I have to take a couple years now to figure out what I want to do with my next career,” he said. “It’s going to take a little bit of reorienting my brain to say you are no longer a professor of computer science because that’s been my identity for 40 years.”
