How does Cal fit into your life story?

I am the son of a nurse (Leota Miller) and a Cal EE grad (Larry DeCuir, 1948). When I was six, they gave me an Erector Set (metal building toy). This was a classic duck-to-water story for a young engineer. I started Cal myself in fall 1968, finishing with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1972, and M.S. in late 1973. I worked in biomedical engineering, then at Atari on early video game consoles. I started my first company, and Cal Ph.D. grad school in fall 1979. I left Cal in 1981 to focus on the company, and married the mother of my children. In 42 years of industrial work, I contributed to medical electronics, video games, personal computers, operating system software, USB and Bluetooth wireless technology; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Decuir. In my encore career, I teach EE;CS to undergraduates at the University of Washington, passing on wisdom I can remember.

What do you think makes Cal so unique?

Cal is a big, excellent, publicly funded university, with lots of diversity in people, in ideas, in classes , and in programs. When I was in high school, I got a copy of the school catalog. I read it like the Sears toy catalogs years earlier: I wanted to learn everything. In fact, I focused on subjects that need labs, things you need more than a library card for. I majored in electronics engineering and computer science, with a minor in pre-med. I squeezed all that into 220 quarter units in four years.

Unique feature: University Students Cooperative Association (USCA), now known as Berkeley Student Cooperative. This is a network of cooperative student houses. I lived in them as an undergraduate and in grad school. I learned leadership and management there. Those skills served me well later on, starting businesses and running international engineering standards committees.

Do you have any advice for current students?

My family went to the Lair of the Bear in the 1960s. We met Earl Cheit and his family. I was invited to the Cal Prep weekend in summer 1968; Earl was the executive vice chancellor. He gave a speech about life at Cal. He made a point that stuck with me: there is so much going at Cal, expect to learn a lot by participating in the world outside of the classrooms. I got my opportunity, when I was admitted to the USCA three weeks before classes started. In the USCA, I had a chance to learn leadership and management in my jobs there, mostly elected positions. Those skills help me immensely later in life: starting companies, running engineering standards committees, in engineering professional societies, as a scout leader, as a youth sports coach, and in citizen corps.