As a young art major at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Dr. Barbara Johnson once stood before blank canvases waiting for inspiration to strike.
It arrived instead in a computer lab in 1984, glowing in green text on a black screen, where she discovered that lines of code — strings of ones and zeroes — could be as expressive as any brushstroke.
More than four decades later, Johnson — now an associate professor of computer science at Maryville College — is stepping down from the role that has allowed her to share that unexpected revelation with students since 2001. She’ll retire at the end of the 2025-26 academic year, bringing to a close a career that saw her build the College’s Computer Science major from the ground up.
“We didn’t have the Computer Science major initially; we had computer science business and computer science math, but not the full suite of computer science courses,” Johnson says. “It was a big undertaking to make that change. As things have evolved, so have the types of classes we teach. Initially, we didn’t teach any courses about web technology, software methodologies or user interfaces.
“There’s a bit of irony there when you compare it to the actual science, because the external face of those things keeps changing. Now, we’re seeing and talking about AI and security, but the fundamentals remain the same: analyzing code, evaluating algorithm efficiency and working with theoretical foundations.”
Road to MC
Although Johnson originally started out as an art student, nothing about the major inspired her. When a friend suggested a computer programming class in 1984, she enrolled … and fell in love.
“Everything about it just clicked. It was fun, and it was challenging — and I never did any art after that,” she says. “I just got the sense that this was the right field for me, because I really liked this stuff.”
Johnson got into the field after punched cards — the primary format for inputting data, storing programs and managing processes on early computers — were largely phased out, she adds with a laugh, meaning her transition into programming didn’t require wrestling with that particular relic. Learning basic programming languages like Pascal and Fortran made her an attractive candidate, and after earning a master’s at the University of Kentucky, she went to work for a U.S. Department of Defense contractor Soft Tech Consulting as a systems programmer.
At the time, she says, DOD officials had mandated that all system computers migrate over to the Ada programming language, in which she became proficient while working on her master’s. At Soft Tech, she worked on an Ada compiler, taking source code and converting it into machine code — work that, at its core, relied on the ones and zeros that first drew her to the field.
Meticulous micromanagement by the government, however, proved to be tedious, and so Johnson and her family moved to East Tennessee. She decided to pursue her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee, and as a teaching assistant while doing so, she also fell in love with education.
“Academia seemed like the right place for me, and since we were living in Knoxville, I started looking for a small college around here, and I found Maryville College,” she says.
Johnson joined the faculty in 2001 and taught until 2011, stepping away for a decade to focus on her health. She returned to the classroom in 2021. Shortly after her initial arrival, she helped establish the Computer Programming Team, a student organization that she’s coached throughout her time at MC. Every academic year, the team travels to the Southeast regional meeting of the Consortium for Computer Sciences in Colleges, where members compete in the organization’s annual programming contest. While they’ve also attended gatherings by the IEEE Computer Society and competed in the International Collegiate Programming Contest, the Consortium is familiar territory, and attending the one this spring in Nashville for the last time will be interesting, she says.
“It’s going to be a little bit sad, and of course it’ll be fun,” she says. “I’ve set the bar and helped develop the team, but (faculty in the Division of Mathematics and Computer Science) plan to hire someone to take my place, and that person may want to do things differently. The programming team has remained strong over the years; we’ve always had a minimum of eight students, and a maximum of 12 to 15, all purely voluntary, of course.”
And all are made familiar with the rubber duck solution: The idea that if computer programmers or software developers or even Computer Science majors at Maryville College get stuck on a problem they feel they should know the answer to, the best course of action is to explain it to an inanimate object — like a rubber duck. The suggestion comes from a popular problem-solving suggestion in the field, and as such, rubber ducks are an inside joke between Johnson and her team.
“They’re also very useful for hurling at the wall when your frustration becomes too much!” she says with a laugh. “My favorite duck wears a straw hat, and his name is Batholoqueue — a ridiculous name coined by one of the students.”
Program expands
Such camaraderie makes it easy to see why the popularity of the Computer Science major at MC has grown steadily over time. Mentoring students has been especially rewarding over the years, but whenever a student explores what Computer Science has to offer and changes majors to become a part of the program, it brings her joy. In many ways, she acknowledged, she sees a bit of herself in those particular students.
“It’s really rewarding when I’ve been able to hook them, especially female students,” she says. “In the field, there’s obviously a gender gap, and when you go to these programming competitions, there might be one female to 100 males. But we’ve been able to bring in quite a few females who have gone on to major in Computer Science and Engineering.”
And then there are the students who become peers in the industry — like Dr. Jesse Smith ’08, a student of Johnson’s who found his own love of computer science through MC and Johnson’s guidance. Others, she adds, have gone on to work with companies like Meta and Google, or have gone on to earn a Ph.D. and now work in software development around the country.
That personal connection, she says, is one of the things she’ll miss most after retirement. After taking a decade off to work through health problems, she returned to the faculty five years ago, but now it seems like the ideal time to step away, she adds.
“I have really mixed feelings about it, because I’ve really enjoyed being here,” she says. “The students are such fun, but on the other hand, I’m getting up there in years, and I’ve had quite a few health problems, especially the last few years, so it’s time. I’ll miss the students, for sure, but also my colleagues. We’re all pretty tight.”
That feeling, says Dr. Jeff Bay — professor of statistics and chair of the Division of Mathematics and Computer Science — is mutual. Bay had been teaching for four years when Johnson arrived at Maryville College, and he recognized from the outset that her contributions would change the curriculum significantly.
“When Barbara joined the Maryville College faculty, she brought energy and rigor to our computer science program, which led to the creation of the Computer Science major,” Bay recalls. “That major has drawn many wonderful students, including those who discovered their passion for programming in her classes and participation on the Programming Team, a team that often ‘hits above its weight’ at regional competitions.
“We were saddened when Barbara had to take a leave of absence, but the timing of her return couldn’t have worked out better. During Barbara’s second term with MC, she has helped update our Computer Science curriculum, developed a user interface course that includes having students create games that are then tested by children from the community, and has coached a reinvigorated Programming Team that had their best performance to date this past fall.
“It’s been inspiring to witness Barbara’s perseverance and return to being the dedicated, beloved professor that she had been for so many years,” Bay adds. “While I’ll miss her after she retires, I’m thankful that she’s leaving behind a strong Computer Science program, a program that will carry on her mark.”
After retirement, Johnson plans to move to North Carolina to be closer to a daughter who lives in Durham. (Her other daughter lives in Chattanooga with Johnson’s three grandchildren.) Spending time with family will be at the top of the list, but she’ll be looking for other ways to fill her time as well.
“I was talking to a friend who has all of these wonderful hobbies in retirement, and I thought, ‘I need to find some hobbies!’” she says with a laugh.
But … not art. That ship has sailed. And while she loved the intellectual challenge of teaching the College’s nine computer science courses, any hobby she takes up likely won’t involve computers.
“I’ve never built a computer,” she says. “I just like knowing what’s going on under the hood.”
She taps her laptop and smiles.
“I’ve enjoyed it. I hope I’ve made a difference,” she adds. “I hope I’ve contributed to computer science education in general, and I hope I’ve graduated students with high standards to go out and do good, ethical work.”