Prof. Lou Berzai passed away on January 10th, 2022 after a full and dedicated life.
Prof. Berzai was employed as a faculty member at Notre Dame from 1984 until his retirement in 2013. During this time he was an important part of the Computer Applications Program (CAPP) in the College of Arts & Letters, a IT second major program founded in 1979. Before joining Notre Dame, Prof. Berzai worked as an IT professional since 1967. Prof. Berzai was widely known and widely respected among students, faculty, and addministrators at Notre Dame. The picture above shows Prof. Berzai in between Prof. Crowell and Claire Shely (the long-time administrative assistant for Profs. Crowell and Berzai).
Prof. Berzai devoted his career at Notre Dame to teaching undergraduates about IT, what it was and why it was important to the personal and professional lives of Arts & Letters and Business students. For many years, Lou served as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for CAPP, a position in which he advised all CAPP majors. Over his years in this position, Prof. Berzai touched the lived of thousands of students, many of whom still remember his legendary CAPP courses on COBOL, Systems Analysis, and IT Ethics. Prof. Berzai was a pioneer, not only in making IT accessible to liberal arts students, but also in helping them see its potential for making the world a better place and for the ethical rules that should apply in making IT use fair, equitable and just. Before it became popular, Prof. Berzai was a strong advocate of "Computing for Good" in this world.
The CAPP program was a predecessor of CDT, which means that the CDT program owes a clear debit of gratitude to Prof. Berzai for his devotion and dedication to making undergraduates at Notre Dame more aware of the importance of IT and computing technologies. We wish to acknowledge this debit. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Berzai family and all those who will miss him.