Wired into nature: Retiring computer science professor looks forward to more outdoor time

When walking into Eric Bachmann’s office in the McVey Data Science building, it would be hard to assume he loved hiking, instructed in the Outdoor Pursuit Center or was a helicopter pilot in the Navy. Instead, students see the trinkets his colleagues bestowed upon him: a duck riding in a rickshaw and a rhino from a trip to India.

They would see books stacked upon each other on the bookcases that lined one side of the room, from a career well spent in computer science, but nothing on the walls.

After moving the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering from its home in Benton a year ago, the computer science professor and previous chair was instructed not to put much up on the new walls. Since he was retiring in a year, he said he “never bothered to do a whole lot here.”

One thing Bachmann said he hopes to continue after retiring is his work with the Outdoor Pursuit Center. He became an instructor roughly 10 years ago. Since then, he’s led trips hiking parts of the Appalachian Trail during spring breaks.

“I think a time I felt closest to the students was doing backpacking with them,” he said. “For a whole week at a time, struggling over the mountains, 50 miles or more, and so those are the students I think I've kept in touch with the most.”

He recounted a specific spring break trip from about nine years ago where norovirus ran through the group while on the trail. He said somehow the group finished the hike, and at the end, he said it was just a high, like they had come through adversity.

“That was the value of a lot of the backpacking trips: it's hard, it’s physically hard, it's mentally hard,” Bachmann said, “and I think people on those trips learned that they could do so much more than they ever thought they could. And maybe that's why I remember [that] so much because they learned they had a lot of strength inside them.”

Lauren Butts, a 2024 winter graduate, wasn’t on the 2016 trip with him, but she met Bachmann while interning as a trip leader at the Outdoor Pursuit Center and now works as an outdoor instructor.

This led her to take multiple hiking trips with him, both individually and in groups. Butts said a memorable one for her was their spring break trip in 2023, where they spent a week hiking 55 miles of the Appalachian Trail, starting in Georgia and ending in South Carolina.

“Eric is one of the most joyful, happy people you'll meet who is so enthusiastic about the outdoors and just getting all people there,” Butts said. “During our spring break trip, we had international students, people who've never really hiked before, to people who that's what they want to do with their life, and he's just a great encourager.”

Hikers receive trail names based on funny things that happen on the trail, their personality or specific tasks they might complete. During the trip, they’re only called by that.

Photo by provided by Lauren Butts | The Miami Student

Lauren Butts, Eric Bachmann and her fellow hikers on the Appalachian Trail during spring break in 2023.

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Butts said Bachmann prepared a lot of meat and cheese on the trail, slicing it up and distributing it to the students. One day it was raining, and he brought it to everyone’s tents because he didn't want anyone out there getting cold and wet — hence his trail name “cut the cheese.”

Peter Chin, a 2023 Miami University graduate with a degree in political science, was on the spring break trip in 2023. He said not only did Bachmann put all the students first, but he also got to know everyone individually.

“He knew that I was trying to go military, and I wouldn't have guessed this, but he comes from a military background,” Chin said, “so we just talked about military stuff. He also wrote me a letter of recommendation for Army Officer Candidate School (OCS), which I was greatly appreciative of, because I ended up getting into OCS.”

Bachmann came to Miami in 2001 after his time in the Navy and graduate school, and in 2015, he started instructing at the Outdoor Pursuit Center.

Even though Bachmann said he loves the Outdoor Pursuit Center, the majority of his time was spent in the lab, doing his research on inertial body tracking with the same kind of algorithms that track the orientation of your phone. His most recent research was the HIVE, a huge immersive virtual environment, but he said becoming department chair in 2020 put a pause on a lot of his research.

Bachmann’s successor, Liran Ma, chair of the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, said he’s met with Bachmann almost every other day since August, when he was promoted to chair, for advice and mentorship. He referenced Bachmann’s space as his “second office.”

“I [have developed] a really deep appreciation for how much he has done,” Ma said, “and how busy this work is and how demanding this work is, and also he did so much for the department, and for the students.”

Overall, Bachmann said the first thing he wants to do after the semester is over is to rest.

“[I’m] trying to reflect on this whole thing, you know? What has it all meant?” Bachmann said. “All this work and trying to think about research and service and everything else I have done, but I guess I just recently connected with former students who I hope that I've helped students find a life, live a life that they wanted to live, allow them to be successful.”

stumbata@miamioh.edu