David Seff is a multi-skilled programmer and a successful professor with over four decades of experience in the classroom. Throughout the course of his 40+ year’s career, he has developed various specialties, including critical Disaster Recovery, and has experience in full-system life-cycle programming from initial analysis and design to coding, unit testing, system testing, implementation, and user training. David Seff has also done Actuarial and Valuation programming, Data Analysis, Test Plan Development and Implementation.

Drawing from his vast knowledge in the computer science field and experience as a lecturer, David Seff has not only transformed his students into successful programmers but also taught them the correct way of using networks.

Tell us about yourself. How did you get here?

David Seff: I’m a graduate of New York University, The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences where I earned my Masters of Sciences in Mathematics and then later at City University Graduate Center where I earned two more math degrees--MPhil and PhD.

I also attended Yeshiva University where I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics and Physics as well as a Masters in History.

My career began as an Adjunct Lecturer at City College, Baruch College, and other colleges in the New York City Metropolitan area. During this time, I also worked for Chase Manhattan Bank as a Project Leader and Programmer Analyst. In this role, I wrote special utilities to recover securities data from crashed main from hard-disk when backup tapes had been written over.

Can you tell us more about your teaching experience?

David Seff: For several years, I served as an Adjunct Lecturer at Touro College, while working with Guardian, teaching night classes. Eventually, after over a decade-long tenure with the life insurance firm, I went back to teaching at Kingsborough Community College and then Brooklyn College teaching Calculus and Graduate Math for Secondary School Teachers among other classes.

For nearly three decades, I designed and taught several courses in math and physics at the New School in the evening math and science department, until the evening science department was disbanded.

I taught a course called “Fun With Math” which had a prerequisite of “a distaste for mathematics” which had full enrollment and rave reviews for years. In this course, I discussed many things that seem counter-intuitive and showed how and why they exist.

For example, I showed the students how to make a piece of paper that actually only has one side and a rectangular array of numbers which when added up first by rows and then by columns gives one sum, but when added first by columns and then rows gives a different sums—that is, it is a bunch of numbers whose sum changes if the order in which they are added up changes! I also showed them numbers bigger than infinity and numerous mathematical systems that contain no numbers at all!

What are your goals/dreams for the future?

David Seff: To continue teaching and see my students succeed in what they want to do, and my family, to see each of my kids, who are in school still, do what they want to do and what they like and believe in.