Ehren, a math teacher, and the one and only Computer Science teacher at West is retiring at the end of this year. He has been teaching for 44 years, and has been teaching for ten of those years at West, but many don’t know how he started or the trials he experienced on his journey to West High.

Ehren knew he wanted to become a teacher in his junior year of high school, and later decided to become a math teacher in college. After his graduation, he went to teach in the suburbs of Chicago. Four years later, due to a short budget in the math department, Mr. Ehren went back to college to learn Computer Science which was available in every major college at the time.  

One of the first classes he took in Computer Science was Numerical Analysis which he explains in the following matter: “The professor would give us a topic from mathematics and we would have to try and write a program to do that [said topic],” Ehren said.

After teaching for 12 years  his brother in-law offered him a job at State Farm which he would start at an entry level job which would make $12,000 less a year, thus he declined the job for personal reasons. He moved to Iowa City, because his brother in-law said it would be easy for him to get into the ICCSD.

His most meaningful class that he taught was AP Computer Science. “I have been teaching it for over 30 years, and dozens of kids that went on to get Computer Science degrees [because of this class]” said Ehren.

In 12 days he will say goodbye one last time to West High and his teaching career as he moves on to his retirement. When asked who he liked teaching better, high school or college students, he commented “I hope no one from Mount Mercy reads this, [but] the [high school] students don’t have the inhibitions that the adults have, but on the other hand, I have more things in common with the adults.”