S. Rollins Guild Fellowship

In memory of S. Rollins Guild, PhD, known as Rollie, the Information Technology Institute for Advanced Study has created the S. Rollins Guild Fellowship. Rollie, a true renaissance man, was a friend and mentor whose inspirational spirit touched the lives of all who knew him.

Like many people who seek to solve complex problems, Rollie was a gifted mathematician and a talented artist. Born in 1923, he began his undergraduate education at Harvard, studying mathematics. After the outbreak of WWII, Rollie left Harvard in 1942 and enlisted in the Navy at just 19. He was commissioned as an Ensign and attended the U.S. Naval Pre-Flight School in Athens, Georgia.

Rollie later arrived in Olathe, Kansas, where he began his progressive flight training rising to the rank of LTJG and earning an Honorable Discharge in 1946.

Following WWII, Guild returned to Harvard, shifting his focus and studying fine arts. After graduation, Rollie embarked on multiple careers, starting as a Manhattan publicist. He created commercials for television, including Coca-Cola. Guild eventually became a Broadway producer, art gallery owner, and artist before moving to Florida in his sixties.

After arriving in Florida, he enrolled at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) and earned a master’s and PhD in Computer Science. After earning his PhD, Rollie joined the faculty at NSU.

When Rollie was on campus, he always had time for students. His office hours were when he was not teaching a class. Rollie encouraged his students to view research through an artist’s lens of creativity and beauty and real-world applications through an engineer’s lens of precision and discipline.

When our director, Dave, was Rollie’s student, he asked Rollie why he embarked on an academic career in computer science later in life. Rollie responded that he worked in cryptography during WWII. Although he never elaborated further, there is no doubt he worked in naval intelligence.

Think of Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician in The Imitation Game movie. Rollie’s dissertation was titled UNIX hidden languages: a formal comparative analysis. He spent the last decade of his life at NSU motivating his students to think outside the boundaries of academia and business and perhaps become their own renaissance man or woman.

The S. Rollins Guild Fellowship recognizes individuals who exemplify educational leadership and innovative research in the IT field. Guild fellows receive a stipend to further their IT research endeavors. The awarding of a Guild Fellowship is by nomination and determined by a selection committee.