Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Every other month host Josh Bucy interviews an Omaha Central High School alum who is making an impact on the world. Go Eagles!
Hello, 2024. Happy New Year. Welcome to Eagle Tales, a podcast from the Central High School Foundation keeping you connected to the nest through storytelling and original interviews. I'm your host, Josh Bucy.
Josh Bucy:The Central High School Foundation was established in 1996 to present and future Central students and today we are even more committed to preserving the values of a Central High School education. The foundation supports the school through many activities like building relationships with alumni, fundraising, student scholarships, teacher classroom grants, and more than I can possibly list here in one sound bite. We're proud of the accomplishments that our students, staff, and 35,000 alumni achieve every day. Your support of Central strengthens Eagle Nation around the world. Be sure to visit our website to learn more at chsfomaha.org.
Josh Bucy:It is my honor to introduce our guest for episode 17 of Eagle Tales. Class of 1971 alumnus Bruce Krogh, is our guest today. During a long career in engineering research and education, Krogh established himself as an expert in the design and applications of computer control systems. As a final act in his career, Krogh moved to Rwanda to become founding director of Carnegie Mellon University Africa, a branch of the school's engineering college. Bruce retired in 2018 and was inducted into the Central High School Hall of Fame in 2019.
Josh Bucy:Bruce, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.
Bruce Krogh:Thank you.
Josh Bucy:I like to start out every episode of Eagle Tales by giving our guests an opportunity to further introduce himself to our listeners. So, Bruce, maybe tell us a little bit about yourself and where you grew up in Omaha.
Bruce Krogh:Well, I grew up in the field club area, and that's, the house I was born in, and and, my mother lived there for many, many years after that. Had the same phone number. She had my phone number well into, her nineties, so really had good roots in field club. So I went to Central, of course, for high school, and the junior high was Norris Junior High. So that's the area I was in.
Josh Bucy:And you had some siblings that also went to Central. Correct?
Bruce Krogh:Yes. There were 5 of us. I have an older brother and sister and a younger brother and sister and we're all Central graduates. And my mother is a central graduate.
Josh Bucy:A family of central graduates. I love that. How much of the junior high you went to, the neighborhood you were in, did that all determine why you went to central or was there really a choice for you as to where you could go?
Bruce Krogh:Well, we were in the central district, so that's where I was headed. But from the as early as I can remember, my mother talked highly of Central and told us all we were going to the best high school in the city. So we were destined for Central.
Josh Bucy:Talk a little bit about your time as a Central Eagle. What activities were you involved in? What clubs were you a part of? Things like that.
Bruce Krogh:Sure. I wasn't the most involved student. I was involved in the math club, played some chess, and that kind of thing. The thing I actually got involved in during high school, was extracurricular. When I was 16, a man from our church worked for an insurance agency downtown, and he told me, why don't you come over?
Bruce Krogh:I'll teach you do computer programming. And so I went to work quite often right after high school, would walk over and and became a computer programmer at an insurance agency. But I I was involved in a lot of the advanced placement stuff, the the the math competitions. That was kind of my involvement at Central.
Josh Bucy:So it sounds like, and I'm curious, maybe talk a little bit about what the programming language even was that you were working on at that point in time, But that was kind of when you first fell in love with working with computers?
Bruce Krogh:Well, yeah. I got a great exposure, had a great mentor, and and it just became a natural thing to program computers. And it's funny you'd ask about languages. It was a business language that IBM had developed called RPG. A report program generator, I think it stood for, but it was kind of a simpler thing than COBOL and that's what I cut my teeth on.
Josh Bucy:I hear a lot about folks who still work in financial industry today and a lot of their mainframe and a lot of that is still used by COBOL, I think.
Bruce Krogh:Oh, no. No? I mean, maybe it is. I've said that I'm really.
Josh Bucy:You would hope not, but it's been around a long time. Yes. Were there any central teachers who had a profound impact on you?
Bruce Krogh:2 really stood out for me. Of course, miss Pratt, who was the guiding light for so many central students that were interested in mathematics And then mister Keaton for English, I I was not oriented towards the literature and English side, but he just had a profound effect on me. He was a unique guy, and and I I just really enjoyed him. He he kinda made me do things that I wouldn't naturally do, writing essays and things. He gave a lot of positive feedback.
Bruce Krogh:So he really stood out.
Josh Bucy:When you were at Central, do you remember anything in particular going on around Omaha at that time? I think it's always kind of fun to think about when you were in high school, things outside of school that were going on that kind of stick in your mind.
Bruce Krogh:Well, that time was a, tumultuous time in the country, and I I remember, a lot of my friends were very, very politically oriented, so lots of discussions at lunch about the Vietnam War and all kinds of things that I wasn't tracking anywhere anywhere nearly as detailed as they were. But but one of the things that I very much appreciated and have con continued to appreciate my entire life was the diversity of Central High School. There was a lot of racial tension in the city. There were some bad things that happened, but having the the kind of living in a microcosm that was reflecting a lot of the tension that was going on nationally, I think there was a lot of benefit in that. I I had some exposure and did a lot of thinking and interacted with people that, throughout my life, I discovered a lot of people just have not grown up with that opportunity in the United States.
Josh Bucy:Yeah. I think about when you were there. There were a lot of legends that were teaching at Central at that time. You mentioned miss Pratt, mister Keenan, Doc Moller would have been your principal.
Bruce Krogh:Right. Right.
Josh Bucy:I wanna go back to what you briefly touched on though when you were working after school kind of beginning to get into computer science a little bit. When was the point where you kind of thought this is what I want to spend most of my life kind of focusing in on, like learning more about the interest intricacies of engineering or computer science, working with computers, working with electrical parts, things like that?
Bruce Krogh:Well, interestingly, I I was very much oriented towards math and physics. And the computer programming was something I enjoyed doing, but I'm not a computer scientist, and I didn't pursue computer science, used computers all the time. And it was not too long ago I was reflecting with one of my students, I never had a computer course in my life. So it was kind of like if you go learn a language naturally, if you my kids, when we lived in Germany, learned German, and and then they never wanted to study it. They already did it.
Bruce Krogh:So computers just was that was the tool that became ubiquitous. It's the tool that everybody used. But, my orientation, and we can talk a little bit more about this, was very much for the basic sciences and primarily, I majored in math and physics in college, and that's what I was interested in. So the fact I ended up in engineering, we can talk a little bit more about that, but I I felt like I spent the rest of my life teaching students engineering and learning myself what in the world it was.
Josh Bucy:Yeah, so let's talk about you graduate from Central, where do you head to? Where do you go off to?
Bruce Krogh:I went to Wheaton College, which is, right outside of Chicago, in a suburb of Chicago and like I said, I majored in mathematics and physics.
Josh Bucy:First time being away from home, at least that far away for quite a while, or what kinda drew you to that school?
Bruce Krogh:Well, it it it had some affiliation, church affiliation and that kind of thing. What was interesting, it was, you know, the first that was by far the furthest east I had ever been. When we vacationed, we went west. So, you know, we we saw the west and did the west. And when I went to Wheaton, it was funny.
Bruce Krogh:It was like people were talking like I was going back east. I think they thought that I would maybe go swimming at the beach over the weekends meeting the Atlantic Ocean. So it was my venture into the east. And it was, of course, the first time I'd lived at home, away from home for an extended period of time.
Josh Bucy:What'd you feel like you learned from those experiences at Wheaton?
Bruce Krogh:Wheaton was a, liberal arts college. It was another time, too. It was people were thinking heady thoughts at Global Arts Colleges. Nobody was talking about what are you gonna do for a living except for the pre meds. They were all talking about what they were gonna do for a living.
Bruce Krogh:But other than that, you just you know, did deep thinking and and talked about, heady things. And so it was a very good, strong academic environment, and it was liberal with requirements, you know, across the board in the liberal arts. And I very much appreciated that, that kind of perspective and the foundation that it gave me.
Josh Bucy:When you were there, had you always known that you'd wanted to go on and pursue a master's or doctoral degree, or when did that kind of set in for you?
Bruce Krogh:Well, it's that's an interesting question because I wasn't spending a lot of time thinking about what am I gonna do for a living, but but it it seemed like that was what else would you do except go to graduate school, right, in math and physics? So I took that step just because, well, of course, that's what I'm gonna do is go to school. I this is what I'm doing well, so maybe somebody will pay me to keep doing this. And in graduate school, in fact, in engineering, they do pay you to do it. You don't pay a dime for your tuition anymore and you're, so you're supported to pursue your passion.
Josh Bucy:I wanted to talk a little bit about your transition from being in a private sector working for, I believe, Westinghouse, and then starting on at Carnegie Mellon. Talk a little bit about that transition and how how you were able to do that.
Bruce Krogh:Well, yeah. So I I went to graduate school, University of Illinois, and I did my master's degree. And at the time, I was I was not sure, you know, if I wanted to pursue the PhD. So I went I took a job with Westinghouse, and actually, I only worked there a year and a half because they had given me a leave of absence from graduate school. And, as that time came up for the end of the leave of absence, I honestly thought I would may probably not go back and but I felt like I I don't wanna just let it die.
Bruce Krogh:So I wrote a a letter to my supervisor who had supervised my master's degree and said, you know, I know the time is coming up. I'm trying to decide what to do. And another professor in the group immediately contacted me and said, I I've got something for you to do. Come back get out of ministry. Come back here and do your PHD with me.
Bruce Krogh:Again, it was a decision that was made just because an opportunity arose and I had no trouble packing my bags and heading back because there was a very exciting opportunity for me back in graduate school.
Josh Bucy:Moving further to the east coast, further east.
Bruce Krogh:Yeah. Right. Right. Then my family thought I was really in the on the east coast. And and Pittsburgh's a funny place because people that live east of Pittsburgh think Pittsburgh is the Midwest, and people that live west of Pittsburgh think Pittsburgh's the east.
Bruce Krogh:So it's it's right on the cusp of the 2, and and it it has a little bit of a mixture of both. But but, yes, I I worked for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, went back and did my PhD in Illinois, and it was just coincidental that I we ended up back. We enjoyed Pittsburgh, but it was coincidental we ended up back at Pittsburgh when I came to Cardiobelon University.
Josh Bucy:You were awarded the Presidential Young Investigator Award by the National Science Foundation and had research projects with both government and private industries, including smart grid technology, mobile robots, semiconductor manufacturing. What was your favorite research project that you worked on, and why was it your favorite?
Bruce Krogh:Well, let me say a little bit about what my technical specialty is. I went to graduate school in engineering, but I remained in a fairly theoretical area, which is the mathematics of control theory. And control theory deals with how you you take, models of physical systems and what you would like them to do and how you design the algorithms that need to be in the computers to make these systems do what they do. So this is like the computers in airplanes that make them fly, or the computers in automated vehicles that make them drive correctly. And so the control theory part of that is actually the mathematical modeling and using mathematics to create what ultimately becomes the computer programs that do this.
Bruce Krogh:And so it's a very mathematical area and so I continue to do what most people would characterize as pretty theoretical work in the engineering domain. But the attractive thing about control theory is everything needs to be controlled. So when you read that list of, different applications, it's not like I'm an expert in all of those areas. In fact, it's a little like, what computer scientists do. Computer scientists know the tools, but when they wanna do something, they have to team up with the domain experts so that they're writing programs that do what need to be done.
Bruce Krogh:And you do the same thing in control theory. So in all of the applications that I got involved in, I would engage with engineers quite often in industry, who were the people that really knew how automobiles ran, how planes flied, how semiconductors are produced, and then worked with them on the development of both modeling these things mathematically so that you could actually create the instructions you need to control them the way they should be. I'm not a good one for picking my favorite of things. Yeah, and consequently, I kind of enjoyed the fact that I was in a position to be able to dive into so many different things and learn learn enough about them that, you know, I I could be kind of a dilettante. I kinda felt like, well, yeah, I've got I've got an idea of how that works.
Bruce Krogh:But that's a fascinating thing to be able to do and to cut across so many, different areas. My PhD thesis happened to be in the power system area, And when I went to, Carnegie Mellon, they hired me expecting me to get into the robotics area, and I did a little bit of work in in, mobile robots and some robotics work, but all of it was using the tools that I had, in the mathematics of control theory.
Josh Bucy:It's funny you mentioned, the aircraft part and I wanted to kind of get your thought on a couple of different things, but one of them was the system that Boeing uses that kind of had some issues. I think it was called the ACAS system for their MAX airplanes. Is that an example of something that similar to, like, something you would have worked on? It was a safety system for their their MAX airplanes?
Bruce Krogh:Unfortunately, I know too much about that. I in that I yes. It's exactly the kind of thing I worked on. That system was doing the kinds of things that automatic control systems do. They try to take pilot commands, take what's happening, and then do the right thing.
Bruce Krogh:That system was a disaster. After I went emeritus and retired, I worked at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon, and I have a personal friend there that was very much involved in the review of that thing. And he and I talked a lot about the details of what went on, and it was a disaster. Many, many bad things happened.
Josh Bucy:Unfortunate, yeah.
Bruce Krogh:Yeah, yeah. So, but it is an example of the kind of things that I worked on.
Josh Bucy:Something else that came up when I was looking into this too was the safety systems on a lot of automobiles use sensors and other things to try to detect. Wheels use sensors and other things to try to detect objects, people, try to keep the passengers safe in the vehicles. Did you ever have the opportunity to do any work on automobiles for safety in that way?
Bruce Krogh:You know, I my involvement with the involved in in the autonomous vehicle work. I I had done some stuff related to that. But I'll tell you a funny story. My wife and I were out on vacation in Portugal this this past summer, and we we rented a car, and it was a BMW, and it had this intelligent cruise control. You know, the cruise control that that, as you pull up and my wife's car has this too now.
Bruce Krogh:You know, if you get behind somebody and they're going slowly, it automatically slows down. And if it speeds up Remarkable.
Josh Bucy:Yeah.
Bruce Krogh:Yeah. Well, I actually worked on that on the development of intelligent curse control with Ford several years ago.
Josh Bucy:Oh,
Bruce Krogh:wow. And so we and I had no idea. I was working with the research group. And so, yeah, we did a lot of work by graduate students. There's lots of simulations of cars and pulling up and how you should slow down and everything else.
Bruce Krogh:And, you know, we did the work. And and I had and then I when I got behind the wheel of settling my car doing, I thought, wow. This is doing what we used to simulate, you know? And I had actually hadn't really paid attention to when and how that technology had become commercialized. But that was a very long time ago that I worked on that.
Bruce Krogh:You know, like so many developments, they're they're in the research labs long before, they they see the light of day. But, yeah. So I I that's the kind of thing that I that I worked on in the automotive industry.
Josh Bucy:You talked about your thesis covering power system, power grids. I feel like the term smart grid is almost a buzzword now with everybody's talking about how our aging electrical grid is vulnerable to cyber attacks or cyber warfare. I'd love to get your perspective on how the grid has improved since you first started looking at it and then what you think needs to be done to maintain its safety and security in the future.
Bruce Krogh:Well, interestingly, my PhD, the the professor that I worked with, what he wanted me to come work with him on was a project that was funded on the tail end of funding that came out of the New York City blackouts in the sixties, and it was focusing specifically on emergency conditions and what kinds of things could or should be done when the system is stressed to try to avoid what what they call the the the, full blackout situation where you have this cascade of of disasters. So quite often what happens at a power system is it loses some major transmission line for for some reason that's bringing power into a very, very heavy load region, and now to continue to supply that load, it needs to draw power in now from other transmission lines that then they become overloaded and then they trip and you just have this cascade of things that happen that lead to these massive blackouts. And that's what my dissertation was on with some techniques to try to prolong the time that you could sustain the system by more intelligently using the available transmission system. So it's interesting, the major thing, that has changed since I worked on power systems is the introduction of renewables.
Bruce Krogh:There's two factors in the renewable situation that make it significantly different. The primary renewable energy sources are not like fossil fuels where you can just turn a generator on and it just runs at whatever power you want it to run. The clouds cover up the sun and wind changes speed all the time, so now you have this enormous variability in the supply and the ultimate variability in that the sun doesn't shine at night. So that's one thing. And the other thing is that you've got now the the power the power system in in developed countries is designed, with this massive sources of power at certain locations, not very many, and then transmission lines that feed everything one direction to the load.
Bruce Krogh:That's it. And there's a lot about the system that is predicated on that's what's gonna happen. Well, suddenly there's power supplies now of a much smaller nature, but they're in the middle of what used to just be a load. If you've got, you know, houses with solar panels, now they can pump power back into the system. And the system was not designed to have power flow both ways.
Bruce Krogh:It just simply wasn't originally designed that way. And so that's kind of the major change. And now there's the need for storage. If you wanna use solar, you have to have some storage, and and that's that's coming along. So to your question, though, back to your question, quite frankly, things are more fragile than they were when I was working in the area.
Bruce Krogh:Now I have done some work in power, and recently when I was in Africa, I've gotten involved in the power area, but I'm not an expert in the area. I haven't kept abreast of it. I've been involved in a lot of other things. I have some news feeds that I read each day about what's happening, so I get kind of the high level view of what's happening. And one of the big problems we've got in the country is that we still are in a situation that where the power is, can be generated massively and made available and where the power is needed is not the same place.
Bruce Krogh:And now you've got the grid is simply not in good shape for moving power around the way they wish they could. And the cost to do that, to make it what what it used to be, are massive. And so this brings it around to this whole idea of smart grid because there's one other assumption that is made in the way our power system was designed that is a very strange assumption, but we've always acted like, of course, that that's that assumption holds, and that is there's enough power to supply whatever the load is right now. I mean, the interesting thing about the power system, unless you've got massive storage, the interesting thing of the power system is what's being generated and what's being consumed has to be equal all the time. If the load goes up, you've got to ramp up the generation.
Bruce Krogh:It goes up and down. I mean, you're you're so you're you're doing this massive balancing act of keeping these things equal all the time, all the time. And the assumption has always been whatever is asked for, at least there's power there. There may be some problems of getting it to the people, but that wasn't the problem. And now that's more of an issue, part of it because of the issues of trying to distribute things, part of it because of the uncertainties of some things in renewables and everything.
Bruce Krogh:And this is where you need smart technology to be able to manage the system in ways that avoid these kind of cascading disasters because one problem here turns into a a bigger problem, a bigger problem, the whole thing collapses. And it's not like the technology you need to do that is extremely sophisticated. It's just that it's not there. The ability to do very fine grain measurements of what's happening, the ability to control things in very fine grain ways, Our system was not built that way. It was built with very dumb breakers to take care of big things, and so we do need smart technology.
Bruce Krogh:I mean, like AI, you know, kinda gets blankly used for everything under the sun. But on the other side, there's something of substance going on there. Just like in AI, there's real AI that is real serious technology and then there's everybody calling their light switch AI and everything else. And this is the same thing going on with smart grid, but there is there is some very substantive, deep stuff that is is smart grid, and that is needed. And here's the hitch.
Bruce Krogh:What we have is a massive, massive legacy system. Making our grid smart is a matter of retrofitting, going back and trying to stick stuff in to something that, you know, is over a 100 years old, and that is the challenge in the United States. That's the challenge in the developed world. Making the grid smart isn't a problem the technology's not there. It's the cost of embedding this technology where you wish it had been there already, and it's happening.
Bruce Krogh:But there's one other very distinctive thing about the U. S. Power system that is very American. You know, we're we're on the we're we're on the lunatic fringe of individualism and and the power grid is we've got thousands and thousands of cup power companies, right? I mean, it is the craziest system.
Bruce Krogh:You know, you go to some other countries and their power grid is being run a little more sanely just because, you know, it's it's not 6,000 companies all trying to, do what they what they wanna do and try to make money, and that's that's fine. But but it it's some things are not necessarily, best dealt with by just having everybody, be able to do whatever they feel like doing. So now you've gotten my, thing on power system.
Josh Bucy:Yeah. No. That that that's fascinating because I was listening to a podcast talking about this and they were saying, you know, it sounds easier to implement a smart grid than it actually is for the simple reason of all the electrical cooperatives across state lines that they have to deal with. And, you know, Nebraska, for example, has OPPD, Nebraska Public Power, utilities that are monopolies, but they are instructed to operate as if there is competition. But in other states, they don't have those same guidelines in place.
Josh Bucy:So, I mean, it's and Omaha is a part of the Southwest Power Pool sharing energy back and forth between other states. Yeah. It sounds like it would be relatively easy to do, but then you think about all the parties involved and it would really slow down the process quite a bit.
Bruce Krogh:Oh, and the regulatory environment is is just as chaotic, because local, you know, very much local regulation, stuff like that. But for example, and I don't know if there's a change, this is a few 2 or 3 years ago, somebody at Carnegie Mellon that works in this area gave a talk on this, but regulations are made for good reasons. But when things evolve, suddenly, you know, you start saying, is that the right regulation? And and at least at the time, I don't I don't I don't know if this changed, but you know it's against the law for you to sell power to your next door neighbor. If if you have excess power, you can't run a you can't run a power line over there and and help out.
Bruce Krogh:Consequently, the ability to make microgrids where you can have some local robustness. There are microgrids, but they're all on single owned properties. So like a huge shopping center or a hospital complex, they may have some local generation, everything, but to sell power has to go through, you know, regulatory environment and everything else. And so there's lots of regulatory things that dictate what's allowed, what's not allowed, and technology may develop fast, but regulations, you know, good luck with those. They they've all, you know, at a sales pace.
Josh Bucy:Changing gears just a little bit, you became the founding director of Carnegie Mellon Africa, branch of the school's College of Engineering, and it was the first program of its kind on the continent of Africa with resident faculty offering the same master's degrees in information technology and electrical and computer engineering as the main campus. I would love to hear how that program came about and your involvement in it from the beginning.
Bruce Krogh:Let me tell you how that came about. The government of Rwanda is very aspirational, and Rwanda is a fascinating country to look at what's happened. It's most well known for the genocide that happened in 1994, and many Americans have seen the movie Hotel Rwanda. The government of Rwanda has done many things to, first of all, try to make sure that a genocide never happens again, but also to develop very intentionally and aggressively in various areas. It's a small, very, very small landlocked country, and it's been very intentional about trying to identify what's its avenue towards becoming economically, viable and growing a true middle class and everything.
Bruce Krogh:And so they identified as one of the pillars of what they would do because they're landlocked, and so doing things like, manufacturing is doesn't make sense because getting what you need is so expensive. They identified, information that they call, in many parts of the world information and communication technology rather than just IT, the ICT. They said this is an area so they developed they made this plan in around 2000. They said, we we want to create ICT as a cornerstone of our economy. People doing things, you know, it it costs nothing to ship software someplace.
Josh Bucy:Oh, yeah.
Bruce Krogh:And so they they put together a a very aggressive plan to try to focus on education, on trying to attract appropriate technology into the country. And around 2007, I was not involved at the time. I was a faculty member, but, they they actually sent a couple of people who came and talked to the dean at Carnegie Mellon. The president of Rwanda likes to do things very, very, very, as I said, aspirationally, aggressively beyond the wildest things. And they looked around, they said, well, what universities are the top in computer science?
Bruce Krogh:And Carnegie Mellon in computer science is typically ranked among the top 4 in the country. Sometimes one, it kinda dances around with the other obvious names. And so they came to Carnegie Mellon, said, we want you to come over and open up a graduate program in IT. Our dean at the time, he loved the idea, and he's the one that really made it happen on the Carnegie Mellon side. He picked up the the fervor for this, and I became involved near the end of 2010.
Bruce Krogh:He asked if I would be director, and I said, Yeah, that was something I do. My wife was enthusiastic. I was at the stage of my career. I'll tell you exactly what the decision was. I thought, okay, I mean, I'd never been to Rwanda.
Bruce Krogh:I'd been on the continent of Africa one time in my life, had a little trip to Morocco from Gibraltar. And so I thought, well, look, I've been doing this for 30 plus years. If I go to Africa, I have no idea what I'll be doing each day. If I stay here, I know exactly what I'll be doing each day. It's the same thing I did from the day I started my career.
Bruce Krogh:So I thought I could stay and continue my research programs and things like that, which were going fine, but it sounded intriguing. Why not? And that's what the decision was. So I got involved. We finally, the university finally signed the contract near the end of, it was in September of 2011.
Bruce Krogh:The president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, came to campus and spoke. And I moved to Rwanda in January of 2012, and my wife and I lived there for 6 years. So that's how it got started. The funding was from the governor of Rwanda.
Josh Bucy:Oh, wow. Okay.
Bruce Krogh:So people always ask me how did Cardiobello decide to go to Rwanda, and I tell them you know what it's it's you won't believe this, but it's the other way around. Rwanda decided for car the they wanted Cardi Amel to be there. They actually put together the funding for the first 10 years to have it there. It's a remarkable story, and and Rwanda has many remarkable stories like that. It's a fascinating country, the kinds of things that it's able to do.
Bruce Krogh:So, we signed a contract. The Carnegie Bell signed a contract to go College of Engineering, and we went there and started. I mean, there was nothing.
Josh Bucy:Oh, yeah.
Bruce Krogh:And, so we had our 1st class come in in the fall of 2012, and we had 21 Rwanda students and one fellow from Kenya. And, that was the beginning of it. And let me just jump forward. I was just there, you know, a week and a half ago. I visited the director.
Bruce Krogh:The programs, it's offering 3 master's programs, 1 in ICT, a master's in electrical and computer engineering, and they've just started 2 years ago a new master's in artificial intelligence. They have over 300 students from, about 22 African countries. And these students, like you said, are earning master's degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, the same degree that we give in Pittsburgh or in Silicon Valley. It's an amazing program. And the students, what the students are doing is amazing.
Josh Bucy:Oh, yeah. It truly feels like one of a kind situation. What would you say has been your proudest accomplishment as being part of that program?
Bruce Krogh:Well, I don't know if I would say anything was my accomplishment. You know, I've been a professor my whole life, and so especially as I bubbled through being an administrator, I don't look at much of that as quote accomplishment. It was, you know, me trying to survive most of the time. But I'll tell you, it's the same experience as as with having an academic career or or even being a teacher at Central High School. You realize that the thing you're proud of is the students.
Bruce Krogh:And in fact, the impact that you have, no matter what you've done personally, you know, my papers or whatever else, the multiplier, the the, exponential growth impact of what happens when students are educated and they go start doing what they're doing is just so overwhelming that it's it's humbling. I mean, it it it's really, that's what I'm proud of. And when I look at, I've even been touched with some of the students and friends with many of them, and just watching. And that's one of the factor that once I got there, I realized that this was really exciting because a student getting a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon in the United States, there's value added, but it's incremental. For these students in Africa, it's life changing.
Bruce Krogh:It's going from one pretty dead end future to a future that they never could have ever imagined. And, that is extremely satisfying. I've always said the secret of a good school, a good university, here's the secret of good university. If you wanna graduate brilliant, articulate, creative students, here's the secret, only let that kind in. Right?
Bruce Krogh:That's the secret. And and so in the United States, you know, you've got these pillars of schools, and they're great schools. You say, look at their great students. Well, go look at what they're letting in. How could they fail?
Bruce Krogh:You know, sometimes we would talk as faculty at Carnegie Mellon, we'd say, you know, we could do anything with these students. And they'd walk out the door, and they'd be fantastic. And and in Africa, it's completely different. You're you're
Josh Bucy:Oh, yeah.
Bruce Krogh:It is not students coming from some elite. The elite are still sending their kids off. They're packing their bags and sending them to Europe and sending you to United States. If they have money, that's what they're doing with them. Many of these kids, many, many of them, they grew up in villages.
Bruce Krogh:I mean, they had nothing. So that's really, you know, in terms of satisfaction and saying Absolutely. What's happened. You just look and you just say, this is this is awesome, what what's happening there.
Josh Bucy:No. That very humbling and also it leaves an impact on you when you when you're impacting that many lives. I can only imagine.
Bruce Krogh:Well, I'm gonna just say I'm gonna cut in real quick. Just to finish the power system story because in Africa, at least in sub Saharan Africa, something on the order of at least a third of the people have zero electricity. Okay? Now I wrote a paper when I was over there for the National Science Foundation. They're a heavily sub symposium, and a friend of mine and I wrote a paper.
Bruce Krogh:We said, what if there was no power grid at all? What would you build today? So they have an opportunity in Africa to build a smart grid. They have an opportunity just to ask the question what what's makes sense? Yeah.
Bruce Krogh:You know, and that that simple question is an interesting one to think about in Africa on so many fronts. This whole idea of what they call leapfrogging in the developed world. They dive in with the current technology. They don't have to go through our development to get what they need. And so in the power area, that's an opportunity and, and a lot of the power, there's a lot happening in the power area out out there.
Bruce Krogh:They're reaching a lot of people, are being reached out with microgrids, and I've been involved in some of that. But what's happening in in Africa is so exciting because they have the opportunity to do things that, in fact, in ways we cannot do. Yeah. We've got this massive we've got this this massive legacy system, and they have an opportunity to do some things that you can't do here. And it's on all fronts, What can happen in Africa?
Bruce Krogh:So Imy heart really, I told you when you contacted me, I really like to talk about Africa. The the thing is that the the problems are local, the solutions are local, they can use global technology, but the way things are happening there, I'm gonna give you 3 very quick examples because there's so much of the West imagines what we have to do is go help Africa. And Africa is a graveyard of people fly parachuting in with their solutions to help Africa. And they aren't solving the real problem. They don't have a right solution for the situation, and they simply last as long as that surge of funding to do something, and then it just sits there and it's useless.
Bruce Krogh:Africa needs to develop it. Here's three examples of local solutions that are just amazing. One's in the power area. They're doing micro grids there to meet these ranges. These are grids that are not connected to the actual finance, I don't know if you've heard of mobile money.
Josh Bucy:I don't think so.
Bruce Krogh:Okay. Okay. Let me tell you about mobile money real quickly. Just just Google it. A cup it's called M Pesu.
Bruce Krogh:It was started in Kenya, and what they they they said there's a problem. People can't send money anywhere. They can't make payments. People don't have bank accounts. Most of the people don't have bank accounts.
Bruce Krogh:And so the telephone company, the telco, they all have mobile phones. They don't have landlines anywhere, became a bank. You can put money in your account, and now people in Africa, in East Africa especially, they pay for everything with their telephones. Everything. From from the smallest thing in the market to a ride on a motorcycle, Everything is being paid for with their full.
Bruce Krogh:They they estimate I just visited M Pesa in, Nairobi the end of last year, and they estimate 85% of all financial transactions are being done on people's telephones. Wow. And this is not using the phone so because it's connected to their bank account, the phone system has become the bank. And it's something we'll never use that. We'll never need it because we have other It's
Josh Bucy:a very radical idea, though.
Bruce Krogh:Yeah. But this is massive. I'm telling you, it's all over Africa. It's been going on for actually, I don't know, M Pesa's gotta be 15 year 10, 15 years old. I mean, this is this is massive and and we and and you hadn't heard of it even, right?
Josh Bucy:I haven't. No.
Bruce Krogh:I'll give you one other example. Are you familiar with WhatsApp? Yes. Okay, you know WhatsApp. So a lot of Americans have never heard of it but it's by far the way the rest of the world except for China, they have their own version communicates.
Bruce Krogh:I just read a study what platforms are being used for e commerce in Africa. You know, like we use Amazon. Okay. What are they using? By far, the largest platform being used is WhatsApp.
Bruce Krogh:Websites were like something like 4%. But it turns out WhatsApp, they have WhatsApp business and and a friend of mine there who happens to be married to a random woman who has a catering service showed it on my on he said, look at this. And her cakes and her food and everything, you could order. You can make orders on WhatsApp. You can pay for it with your mobile money.
Bruce Krogh:You can get it delivered and everything else. And here, they're using an application that most Americans have never even heard of.
Josh Bucy:Yep.
Bruce Krogh:So there's there there's exciting things going on in Africa. And sadly, the coverage of Africa in I try to keep track of what's going on in Africa. And believe me, following US news, you don't get anything except the occasional disaster and starvation and everything else. But there are really exciting things going on in technology, and these are solutions that Africans are developing. Anyway, so now I give you my African sermon, and we can move on.
Josh Bucy:No. And hopefully some of your your students who are graduating are going on to help contribute to a lot of
Bruce Krogh:those things. Yeah. They're they're and 90% of Africa. They're working, they're starting companies, they're working for companies. They're virtually all working for companies you've never heard of.
Bruce Krogh:There are a lot of big companies in Africa. So Africa is a massive place. You know, the way what's happening with demographics, 1 out of 4 people by 2050 will be African. So Wow. Okay.
Josh Bucy:No. Thank you. Thank you for for sharing that though. Because I remember when you were at the hall of fame and I read your biography and it's like you moved to Africa for this opportunity and I mean, that's a huge change in your life for many different reasons. So it's really cool to hear about the impact and the things that are happening on the ground there and comparing it to what we have here.
Josh Bucy:I wanted to end with what is probably my favorite question. What is your favorite central memory that you might have?
Bruce Krogh:Oh, my favorite central memory. That's very nerdish, but it's it's this is funny. I just really enjoyed calculus class. It's not just miss Pratt. I mean, she had her own style, but the friends that I made, there there's a cadre of of friends that, you know, it was such a rich intellectual environment, most of them much brighter than I were was, just being able to you know, actually, I I made this remark.
Bruce Krogh:I you just reminded me because I made this remark when I got to give a little bit of a speech, and and that's this. This is one other thing that, Central gave me, and I think this is was an important lesson. And that was I was surrounded by people that were much smarter than I was. And I I simply gained an appreciation of being friends with them, of being being able to understand how much brighter they were, and just enjoy watching them. And that was a terrific lesson for the rest of my life.
Bruce Krogh:Instead of spending my life fretting over the fact that, you know, trying to show that I was smarter than other people or something or, you know, I just gained an appreciation for there are brilliant people in the world, and it's really a pleasure to get to know them. And so my memory when I said calculus class was that was kinda the environment in which I got to know 2 or 3 really, really brilliant people, and I carried that for the rest of my life. I thought, you know what? It's just great. Take people for what they are, and if they're brilliant, enjoy it.
Josh Bucy:Yeah. Yeah. Lifelong friends and that's awesome. That's really cool. I think we're all a little bit smarter after this conversation.
Josh Bucy:So, Bruce, I wanted to say thank you for joining us. It's been a treat, and we appreciate you being here.
Bruce Krogh:No. Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it too. Go Eagles!
Josh Bucy:Once again, I want to extend a big thank you to today's guest, 1971 alumnus Bruce Krogh. We hope you enjoyed episode 17 of Eagle Tales and we'd love to hear what you thought of this episode by connecting with us on our social media. You can find us on Facebook, X, and Instagram by searching for the Central High School Foundation. And if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to us on your favorite podcasting platform whether it be Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.
Josh Bucy:A complete library is also available on our website and that's chsfomaha.org. And remember, near or far, you are always part of the Central High School family. Go Eagles.
Bruce Krogh:Go Eagles.