Phil Pfeiffer (M.S./Ph.D., Wisconsin, '86/'91) hails from Pittsburgh, PA, where he
was born, grew up, and lived until 1984 before returning to graduate school. This
fall, Phil started his 30th year in teaching -- his 25th on ETSU's faculty. Between
1976, when he graduated from Yale (B.S., '76) and 1984, when he started graduate work,
Phil programmed for a year for in the Yale Registrar's Office before returning home
to work as a programmer/analyst for PPG Industries' Glass Process Control group.
Phil did his Ph.D. work in programming languages--a subject that, ironically, he's
never been asked to teach. Rather, he's served as a utility guy, teaching courses
in introductory programming, file and data structures, data communications and networking,
computer architecture, operating systems, real-time programming, information and network
security, distributed systems, enterprise information systems, computer literacy,
professional issues, cryptography, Unix, XML, and scripting languages. More recently,
Phil has taught courses in software project management, software design, technical
communication (a.k.a. research methods), and Python, and served as an advisor for
graduate capstone projects and graduate and undergraduate theses.
When he isn't in front of a computer, Phil makes time for reading, writing to and
visiting friends, seeing an occasional movie, listening to all kinds of music, and
getting out and about with Linda, his wife of 41 years. The latter includes biking,
walking, and scuba, including periodic trips to Gainesville, FL for cave diving.