Valued faculty members – and each other's Valentines

About their first encounter 33 years ago, Ken and Deb Armstrong hold nothing back.

"We met in a bar," he says with a smile.

"Literally," she says with a laugh.

Little did they know that decades later they'd teach together in Florida State University’s College of Business. We thought we'd share their story, just in time for Valentine's Day.

The Armstrongs have been working together at the college for almost five years and at the university for about 12 years, making them a symbol of teamwork, excellence, stability and – you bet – love.

"They love their students. They love teaching. They love what they do," says Ashley Bush, chair of the Department of Business Analytics, Information Systems and Supply Chain, or BAISSC, where Ken is an associate lecturer specializing in database architecture and Deb is a professor of management information systems.

Their students express a mutual feeling.

"I love Dr. Deb, absolutely amazing," one student wrote on a national website that lets students rate professors and instructors.

Another student wrote about Dr. Deb's husband: "Absolutely loved Professor Armstrong this summer, he was a real cool dude."

The two dig each other, too.

They sit together at departmental meetings. They lunch together and go to FSU baseball and football games together. They also practice their faith and volunteer together as members of Tallahassee's Deer Lake United Methodist Church.

And they reflect warmly on chance events that twice have led them to teach in the same departments, at the University of Arkansas and now at FSU.

"Everything has led us to this point – now that we look back on it – for a reason," Ken says. "We're here, and we're happy, and we're doing exactly what we love to do."

The Armstrongs keep the college steeped in sweetness. Students can rely on Ken to bring donuts or the couple's dog, Zeus, to class. Colleagues can count on Deb to bring a basket of goodies to meetings.

"I think that's their way of saying, 'I care about you,'" Bush says.

As keynote speaker in November at the Middle East & North Africa Conference for Information Systems in Morocco, Deb told attendees: "We can, and need to be, the change we wish to see in the world. We can tackle difficult and important problems. One person may not be able to change the world, but one person can change someone's world."

With that in mind, and true to the college’s emphasis on individual attention, Deb says she wants to know more about her students than their names.

"And I want to know that I increased your value in the marketplace," Ken says. "That's one of my chief goals, to build value in others. That's my reward."

They met in Southern California in 1990. She was working in her native region as a budget analyst for a major aerospace-manufacturing company, and he was working far from his Illinois homeland in technical sales for a multinational buildings-efficiency company.

A colleague had invited Deb to a Happy Hour gathering of Ken's softball team.

"There was an empty seat next to him, and I sat down," she says.

"And we were engaged three months later," he says.

They have been finishing each other's thoughts and sentences ever since.

"We married the right people," he says.

"That's what we always say," she says. "We're not perfect. We're just perfect for each other."

— Pete Reinwald