Ruth Hennigar (’81) knows the value of a degree in STEM. In 2014, she created an award to support young women, who like herself, want to attend Acadia to pursue a degree in computer science. She established the Ruth Hennigar Entrance Scholarship in Computer Science .

Her journey begins

Hennigar arrived in Wolfville in 1977 after the eight-hour car trip from Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, to enter Acadia’s computer science program, her timing couldn’t have been better. Her journey from the northern NB town to Acadia and on to Silicon Valley had many twists and turns, but Hennigar always had her eyes focused on the road ahead. Hennigar attended Acadia on the very cusp of the computer revolution, and even before her graduation she was heavily courted by a veritable Who’s Who of the high tech industry. 

After graduating as one of a handful of women in Acadia’s Computer Science program, Hennigar began her career as a software development engineer at two notable technology innovators, Bell Northern Research and Apple, where she created telephony, networking and operating systems products. 

Since then, Hennigar has been an Engineering and Product executive at several startups as well as at Fortune 500 companies. She was employed as General Manager of the Java team at Sun and Vice President of Software Development at Palm.  Hennigar then took a break from tech for a few years and co-owned two fine wine and cheese shops.  She soon missed the intellectual stimulation of tech and joined eBay as Vice President of Program Management and Software Quality Assurance.   Her last role was as VP of Software Product Management at Motorola Mobility.  When Google bought Motorola in 2012, Hennigar took the opportunity to retire and serve as an advisor to several early-stage tech startups. She recently completed serving on the board of a non-profit which provides services to victims of domestic violence.

“When I finished high school, I looked at what I wanted to do, and computer science was at the top of my list - not that we had computers in my high school back in 1977. It just sounded really interesting to me, using tools to solve problems. I think there were 50 or so computer science majors when I started but it really popped in my sophomore year, and by my third year there were hundreds of them. I think there were four women in my class.

Rare in her field

“As a female computer scientist, I was as rare as a talking dog, but at Acadia, I was treated like everyone else. You didn’t get any special pass but you didn’t get any negatives either. I’m in an industry where women are unfortunately still very rare, but I never felt any bias towards or against me at Acadia. I was just expected to show up, do my work, and if I did well, that was fine. If you were a smart person, you were a smart person. 

That probably helped me a lot later on when I got out into the real world of technology.  I didn’t expect a special pass nor did I expect to be treated differently. I didn’t go expecting to be discriminated against and, for the most part, I wasn’t." 

“In my second and third years at Acadia, we were updated to a very state-of-the-art system. When I got to Bell Northern, one of the guys I was working with was from the University of Toronto and he was asking me what equipment we had at Acadia. When I told him, he said that they had used a much older system that was expensive to upgrade. I certainly didn’t come in with a disadvantage compared with my colleagues.

“Each of my Computer Science professors was interesting and unique. I had no bad professors. I remember several of them, including Wayne Brehaut and Dr. Khan and Bill Wilder. They all had their own style of teaching, but they were all very good. They enjoyed their subject matter and really cared that the students were doing well.

“Acadia laid a good foundation. I knew nothing about computer science when I got there. It just was fascinating to me, and I soon realized that I had a knack for it, partly because I’m a problem solver. Of course, I didn’t know I was a problem solver until I got there. You don’t know anything really know much about yourself when you’re 17.

Discovering yourself

“I think that university should be a place that helps you to learn who you are. For me, Acadia was a great place to learn that. I think I learned as much about myself as I did computer science. I was always top of my class in our high school, so it wasn’t as if I wasn’t used to being the ‘smart girl,’ but at Acadia I was put in a class of very bright people, and I realized that people can be exceptional in a variety of areas and there’s a value in all of that. You can learn from everyone. It was a really helpful realization. I think some people go to school focused on getting their education and they don’t learn the rest of that until later in life. I was lucky enough to learn it earlier. I left Acadia with confidence.

“I absorbed the life at Acadia. It was the first time I’d experienced and worked alongside students from different cultures, from different races and different countries. It was great to mingle with kids from China and India and discover that they were just regular people trying to do the same thing you were – trying to accomplish things. It grounded you in the bigger world but in a place that was never overwhelming. I loved the multiculturalism of it. There were ample opportunities to meet and interact with different people.  

“Acadia is an intimate school and I’m a firm believer that you get a better education when the class sizes are reasonable. You can get more personal attention, you can participate more in the process instead of just watching and I think that was encouraged when I was at Acadia - and it still is. The level of education there was superb. I still laugh about going to a talk at Apple back in the late 80s and this guy was coming into a presentation on C++ and programming. I said, ‘Oh, that’s like Simula!’ He said ‘How did you know about that?’ I said ‘That’s the core language we were taught at Acadia.’ He said ‘Well that’s what this is based on and you are leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else.’ It was a great basis for my education as a programmer, as a geek.

“It’s been a long and winding road. It’s this weird thing where you start off not even knowing what computer science is and in January of your final year you get 20 job offers and are immediately hired at a time when computers were really taking off. I started university at 17 and graduated when I was 21 and was living on my own.

"Confidence is key because if you can’t go with the flow in technology, you’re in the wrong business. Technology changes so quickly and if you’re uncomfortable with change, software engineering isn’t where you should be. Two weeks after my 25th birthday I moved to California, which is quite a leap, but I had that confidence that I could do it.”

Creating a named award

Named student awards can be created at Acadia University for less than $100 a month, making an incredible impact on our students. To discuss your options, please contact Executive Director of Philanthropy Nancy Handrigan (’92) at 902-585-1042 or nancy.handrigan@acadiau.ca

This story first appeared in our Voices of Acadia series as part of Acadia's 175th anniversary. 

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