Wired to Contribute
Robert E. Toense ’76 had a head start on his education in electrical engineering—and on being a Terp. His father and uncle, identical twins, both graduated from the University of Maryland with degrees in electrical engineering; as a kindergartener, Toense would tag along on the weekends to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where his father and uncle worked on the nation’s first fully operational stored-program (digital) computer, parts of which are displayed in Smithsonian museums today. “Those Saturdays with my father are what got me excited about engineering,” says Toense, “and by the first grade, I was telling my classmates I was going to be an electronics engineer.” As an undergraduate, he applied his classroom learning to a co-op at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), an experience that cemented his desire to pursue engineering as a career and opened the door to his first job after graduation. (Years later, an office mate at NIST, Nariman Farvardin—who would go on to serve as chair of UMD’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, then dean of the Clark School—encouraged Toense to take graduate-level courses at Maryland, where Toense accumulated 40-some credits.) Toense worked at NSWC before following in his father’s footsteps to NIST, where he served as an electronics engineer from 1980 to 2011. His career highlights include working on communications technologies for early wireless Local Area Networks, Integrated Services Digital Networks, and videoconferencing—a precursor of Zoom. “COVID came along, and we had this video application for communication,” he says. “If we hadn’t had it, things would have been very different.” When it came time for the alum and his wife, Diana Locke, who retired as a toxicologist from the Environmental Protection Agency, to give back, they focused on student support at their alma maters. In 2021, they established the Robert E. Toense Family Endowed Student Support Fund in the form of a bequest; at the same time, they started the Robert E. Toense Current-Use ALEx Garage Student Support Fund. Their yearly contributions assist undergraduates who are members of a Clark School team selected to collaborate in the ALEx Garage, a state-of-the-art design workspace in the E.A. Fernandez IDEA Factory. Remembering his co-op days, Toense says, “I wanted to do something to promote hands-on experiences for students. I want to see ideas come forward as solutions to our greatest engineering challenges.” As an added bonus to making contributions now, Toense can witness his impact on the students he supports—which he did on a recent visit to the ALEx Garage. He and Locke attended an all-hands meeting and work day for UMD Loop, the student team charged with designing, building, and implementing a fully functional Mars rover for the annual University Rover Challenge. “We talked about what their decision-making process looks like and what you do when things don’t go right,” he says. His one piece of advice to engineering students? “I looked to work at something I could contribute to, knowing that would make me happiest. That and working with good people—they’re the prize to keep your eyes on.” In retirement Toense finds happiness feeding his creative side. A flutist and a tenor who sang with the UMD Chorus, he keeps up his musical connections and plays and sings with his church and community organizations. He also devotes time to fine woodworking, crafting federal and colonial era furniture. Together with his wife, he enjoys traveling and exploring new cultures. He feels fortunate his engineering career allowed him these opportunities—and even more fortunate to be able to pay them forward to the next generation. “I look at that lobby in the IDEA Factory and see my gear on the founding donor wall. Just being listed among Jim Clark and the others is a big honor.”
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