Position: Instructor of Engineering

Years at NCSSM: 1 year as full-time faculty, and was a guest lecturer before that beginning in January 2015

Home: Born in Idaho, Love grew up in New Hampshire and has lived in Durham since moving to the Triangle for graduate school.

What he does outside of work: Love’s main pastime is coaching soccer through the Triangle Futbol Club Alliance, a long-running hobby of his. Love started volunteering with Rainbow Soccer during graduate school, and now mainly coaches 8-9 year-old girls as they enter the world of competitive soccer with TFCA.

Love also enjoys playing accordion, although he doesn’t get quite as many opportunities to play as he used to. He began playing as a child in a very musical family. “We all played instruments as kids,” Love says. “My mom was a big von Trapp family fan. She played accordion, and two of my brothers and one sister all fronted bands.” Love himself used to play with Jimmy Magoo and the Little Bang Band in Chapel Hill. These days, he has five accordions at home, including the one he played as a child, one passed down from his parents, and a few others he’s picked up along the way. “It’s kind of a semi-hobby to find them,” he says. He’s even thinking about starting a Mini-Term course looking at the structure of accordions and how they are built.

What coworkers might now know: Love is the oldest of seven kids. He was also a varsity lacrosse player in college, spending his four years at MIT playing long-stick defense.

Best part of his job: “Actually doing real engineering,” Love says, alongside his students. “I’m learning aspects of engineering that I didn’t know much about before. There are lots of elements that I’m learning about and teaching myself, and things that the students know a lot about, and I get to have them share something with me too. That discovery of creating new curriculum has been the coolest thing.”

Favorite perk of working at NCSSM: Love teaches interactive videoconferencing courses through NCSSM’s Distance Education and Extended Programs. He has enjoyed having a support team for all the content he is creating. “I get to tell people I have a producer! I have a production team, and anytime I want to produce something, I have a team of people to make me look good,” he says.

The trips he takes out to places like Murphy and Ocracoke to visit his IVC classes don’t hurt, either.

One thing about working here he’d do differently: “I’d like to see a little more integration between DEEP and the residential program,” Love says. “There can be a little bit of a disconnect there, and I think it might be better if there was a little more integration.”