prof-BuhnJackDSC8745.jpgWhen S. T. Mau, then dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, asked Jack Buhn to join the Industry Advisory Board in 2002, Buhn’s first reaction was, “Maybe you want my VP of engineering instead.” Although Buhn, a cofounder of the firm Canoga Perkins, had a technical background, he worked in marketing, not engineering.

But no, Mau assured him, “I want you.” So Buhn agreed, and he has remained on the board ever since.

“What intrigued me about the IAB is that CSUN and the college are so motivated about getting themselves involved with the community,” Buhn says. “I think the IAB is absolutely good for the community and CSUN, and it’s an interesting, interesting bunch of people. Plus, the CSUN administration and students and the community are very fortunate to have Dean Ramesh in a leadership role.”

Buhn grew up in Minnesota, attending the University of Minnesota and then working for 3M, which sent him to California as an account manager for Pacific Bell and General Telephone. Recognizing the need for test equipment in the telecom industry, in 1970 he and a couple of partners founded what became Canoga Perkins in the San Fernando Valley. The company subsequently moved into the datacom world and ultimately fiberoptics.

“We didn’t invent fiberoptic modems, but we were the first to make fiberoptic modems commercially available in mid-1980s,” he says.

Canoga Perkins next expanded into multiplexers and then to wave division multiplexing; in recent years, its main thrust has been in network interface devices.

Buhn was the company’s CEO, and as a member of the IAB, he spearheaded Canoga Perkins’s hiring of interns from CSUN, which opened the doors to recruitment of CECS graduates as employees.

“Right now we probably have a staff of 30 engineers, and I think at least 12 of them are CSUN grads—and some started as interns,” he says. “It’s a major benefit to the company to recruit from the college, and the intern program gives you a chance to look at a person and say, ‘You’d be good over here or there.’ It’s been an excellent program for us.”

Buhn is especially interested in efforts to inspire younger students to study engineering and lauds the college’s high school outreach programs. “You have to start at a pretty young age, and I think that’s an excellent way to get the kids motivated,” he says. “It shows me that the college knows what it has to do to grow the enrollment.”