Any student unsure of what to major in or which career to commit to might find the career of Alva Couch, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, to be a comfort.
With an unconventional career path that has combined his passions for learning, teaching, art and technology, Couch is living proof that life is a process, not an achievement, with many twists along the way.
"First of all, Darwin was wrong," Couch said. "It's not survival of the fittest - it's survival of those who fit. It's not to be the best; it's to be a part of the solution, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and being able to be honest."
Born and raised in North Carolina, Couch began as a musician, studying the bassoon at the North Carolina School of the Arts for four years. Upon graduation, he was faced with the decision of attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or sitting fourth chair in the North Carolina Symphony.
Couch chose to pursue art through an education at MIT, where he studied design and graduated with a degree in architecture. Later faced with the decision of whether or not to attend graduate school and become an artist, a proposition from an elder allowed Couch to take a completely alternative role: that of an engineer.
During his senior year at MIT, Couch's advisor was unsuccessfully working on a laser scan engine intended to draw pictures, and asked Couch if he could make it operate properly.
"He shipped this giant thing to my dorm, and two weeks of all-nighters later, I got it, and it was the first viable real-time laser scan engine in the world," he said.
After working as a programmer analyst at Harvard Medical School, Couch came to Tufts in the fall of 1982 and worked his way up from a part-time student to a full-time student and teaching assistant, to a math instructor. It was then that he realized he was intrinsically drawn to teaching, and five years later he was hired as a member of what is now the Computer Science Department.
"The reason I chose Tufts both as a graduate student and as a teacher is because of the principal of balance. Tufts was one of the few schools in the world who felt there should be a balance of teaching and research; they are two inseparable parts of being a professor ... Where else in the universe can you find a school with a cutting edge research program and a faculty open-door policy? We attempt to be a balance between everything, and we attempt to be bridge-builders," Couch said.
Couch, who has taught courses in nearly every subject in his department, is currently teaching a trial course on service science, which is used to understand how to most
efficiently and cheaply supply services on the Internet.
"I'm usually teaching about what's happening this year - there's a cutting edge quality," he said. "Courses often change because I want to teach what's happening now, and now is a moving target ... Curriculums are never the same twice."
As someone who has been present for the development of computers and society's dependence on them, Couch has kept his eye on the changing face of technology. Computers, Couch said, were first thought to be only for supercomputing, then viewed as information processing tools, followed by sources of communication and finally platforms for the media.
But now, Couch said, the challenge is learning not to drown in a sea of information, where people can generate terabytes of information
about themselves.
"There's a bigger problem which is my field: How do you manage that info? The generation of information, the drowning in information and finding this information. It's going to go through another jump from being a media tool to being an information management tool within the next five years," he said.
In his own research, Couch has spent much time focusing on strategies for network management and ensuring that academic sites and networks work consistently.
"This network for computer science started as a single work station on my desk in 1985. I learned from that what the issues were for system and network administration," he said.
This work, like much of his career, is split between practice and theory. While this may sound like a difficult balance to maintain, Couch said the combination is what excites him the most about his field.
"I find the most fun to be where you can actually go write a program and then prove that it's right," he said.
Lately, however, the focus of Couch's work has migrated toward the organizational side of his career at Tufts.
"At this point I'm finding that when I started here, my strength was teaching, and now I'm finding that my strength is organizing, and one of the things I've been able to do in the recent years is gather people around a common need," he said.
When Couch isn't busy in the classroom or serving on several organizational boards, he can be found kayaking, canoeing, kiting, taking photographs or riding one of his 30 bicycles - he and his wife will participate in their 26th tandem tour of New England this year.
Couch also credits factors beyond human control for personal success. "From a game standpoint, it is amazing how much of life is a lottery, how much is just a matter of dumb luck," he said. "The appropriate strategy for dealing with a life so full of chance is guarded opportunism ... Live your life as a process, not an achievement."
