Dr. Robert Zerwekh
Associate Professor
Dept. of Computer Science
zerwekh@cs.niu.edu

In the spring of 1979 I finished my Ph.D.dissertation in Philosophy at the University of Illinois and traveled to the Philippines to join my wife who had been there for the previous six months.  She was a graduate student in anthropology and she was living in a small town outside of Baguio City in Benguet Province.  I had no idea what I would do there once I arrived.  I really knew nothing about the Philippines and I had serious doubts that the vegetable farmers in the region had need of a recent graduate in medical ethics.  Nevertheless, I decided to make the best of it and would welcome the new experiences that were about to come my way.

Shortly after arriving, I was in Quezon City and dropped by the University of the Philippines, where the chairperson of the philosophy department had been a colleague of one of my professors from Illinois while they were in graduate school. We met, he offered me a job teaching, and I happily accepted. For a year and a half I traveled to Quezon City on Monday and returned to Baguio on Thursday night. I could fill a book with tales about my experiences on these frequent bus trips that lasted anywhere from 4 – 8 hours depending on whether roads through the mountains had been washed out by a typhoon or not.

 

We returned to the States where I taught philosophy at the University of Delaware and its Center for Science and Culture. Two years later we went back to the Philippines because my wife got a post-doctorate fellowship.  This time we both lived on the campus of the university. We traveled around Southeast Asia a lot during this stay and I got to soak up some of the unique and mesmerizing cultures found there.

When my wife got a job teaching anthropology at Northern Illinois University, I knew it was time for a career change, so I enrolled in the computer science department as a graduate student.  After receiving my Masters degree, I joined the department as a faculty member in 1987.  I soon hooked up with Jim Henry (another member of our Center who was also teaching in my department) and he got me involved with some work that he and other colleagues were doing in computer assisted language instruction for Thai and Indonesian. This work evolved over time as computing paradigms and platforms changed, and now is best represented by SEAsite (www.seasite.niu.edu), a comprehensive web site dedicated to language, people, and culture of seven Southeast Asian countries.

When I look back over the last 25 years, I feel very fortunate to have been exposed to Southeast Asia.  I can honestly say that I have a deep love and respect for that corner of the world.

Grants and Research Interests

My current research interests are in software development for Web based instruction. SEAsite serves as the vehicle for the delivery of this software.  I am currently investigating new techniques for web site updating that involve asynchronous communication between web pages and web servers.  I am also interested in database systems and delivery of data to web pages and delivery of data through the use of web services.

My research work has been supported by a number of grants over the course of many years, including the U.S. Dept. of Education and the NSEP.

Courses regularly taught

 Personal Home Page

 www.seasite.niu.edu/zerwekh