After graduating from Harvard in 1974 with a BS in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Howard C. McCausland worked at the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where he helped write software for the Einstein Observatory-the first orbiting X-ray telescope.

Finding that his talents lay more in computing than physics, Howie became a systems programmer/analyst at the Health Sciences Computing Facility at the Harvard School of Public Health for two years, before returning to the Center for Astrophysics. He remained at the CfA as its systems manager during the transition from central mainframes to distributed networked microcomputers.

Howie left the CfA late in the 1980s to become the Network Manager for Harvard University's main campus, where he helped develop a strategic vision for Harvard's next-generation high-speed data network architecture.
Howie came to Middlebury College in 1989, with a vision to build a world-class campus network, as Assistant Director of the newly-reorganized Academic Computing department,. One of his first steps was winning an NSF grant that funded the initial cost of connecting Middlebury College to what was just beginning to be widely called "the Internet".

In the years since, we built the network, the Internet became a household word, technology became an integral part of the College's life, various college reorganizations brought us to the new Library and Information Services, and somewhere along the line Howie acquired the cumbersome title Director of Network Design and Operations.