Photo by Candice Brown,
UNH - Manchester
Center for Graduate and Professional Studies

Looking at Bruce Johnstone, one would never guess that he had been at UNH Manchester for almost twenty years. His youthful face smiles as he talks about his job; his office is decorated with photographs of his wife and young children. As Information Technologist II, Bruce has been supporting the computing needs of UNHM's administrative users since December of 1985.

Bruce's duties include programming, logic, and knowledge of multiple Windows operating systems. What could be just "computer jargon" to most people is a challenging and constantly-changing language to Bruce. "I prefer strongly to teach myself," he says, "taking chances and discovering things through trial and error." His job allows him the freedom to work without a specific structure: the campus has ever-changing needs, and no day is ever the same. Being able to take time occasionally to learn new technology or approaches to completing a job are some of the things that keep Bruce going. "I'm not specialized like I might be in a large corporation," he says. "There are sites like newsgroups and Google, and other various places now to learn if you just put the time into it."

When he's not surfing the net for new ways to program and repair computers, Bruce may be found hard at work on other tasks. He fixes viruses and other bugs on administrative computers, manages file print sharing, and deals with reports from the Banner system for both UNH and USNH. "The numbers from registration come from reports that I produce," Bruce says. While Bruce's chief job function is serving the administrative side of computing, he notes that it's all interconnected. "I send out mass emails to up to 1400 students five to ten times a month," he says. "So there's a lot of overlap."

In twenty years, Bruce has seen some of the great leaps in technology that campus computing has taken. In 1985, he worked with some of the very first IBM PCs. "It's the speed of processing that has changed the most," Bruce says.

When he's not busy safe-guarding the UNHM network or fixing various computer problems, Bruce enjoys spending time with his family. He and his wife Elizabeth live in Weare, NH, and have two children: Henry, nine, and Hazel, six. "They're very good kids," Bruce smiles. He likes to hike, and blends his work with computers with his passion for the outdoors by utilizing electronic topographical maps to plan his ventures. Eleven years ago, Bruce and his family built their own home in Weare, a post-and-beam construction using wood from their two-acre lot. "It's rewarding knowing everything is what you did," Bruce says. Whether it's building his own home or meeting the administrative computing needs for UNHM, for Bruce Johnstone, it's just another obstacle that he'll be able to tackle.