Vernon Blackledge is an Emeritus Professor. He was a member of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) for many years before the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) was formed. He moved to CSE when ECE became Electrical Engineering in 1984. In ECE, Blackledge operated a minicomputer, microprogramming and interfaces laboratory that built systems to do sensing, control and a good deal of work in voice and speech recognition. He was very effective working one-on-one with his students in the laboratory -- so much so that occasionally he even forgot to go to class until it was half over. During his time as a faculty member in CSE, he concentrated especially on teaching lower division courses and an occasional upper divison course in the computer interfaces area.