A Jacksonville company that Bob Touchton helped start in 1984 has been transformed into one of the major technology firms on the East Coast.

Bob Touchton is an alum who is not only committed to his family and his career but his alma mater as well. Although traveling more these days on business, he nevertheless still finds time to devote to the University of North Florida.

Whether its serving as a member and former chair of the advisory council for the College of Computing Sciences and Engineering, helping out at the annual high school robotics competition on campus, serving as an adjunct instructor or making scholarships available to students, Touchton has made significant contributions to the University. For his continuing work, Touchton was recently selected as the 2001 Distinguished Alumni Award winner. "I'm deeply honored and feel truly blessed to be chosen for this award. It has always been important to me that I give something back to the community and somehow I have been lead to invest time in ways that I hope will help UNF, its students and even the occasional robotics geek at the middle and high school level," he said.

Touchton, vice president of the Advanced Technologies division of Strategic Technologies, Inc., has been busy in his professional life as well. Through mergers and acquisitions, a Jacksonville company he helped start in 1984 has been transformed into one of the major technology firms on the East Coast.

Touchton graduated from Lee High School in Jacksonville with thoughts of becoming a band director. But then he discovered that band directors make about half as much as engineers. He pursued his interests in science at the University of Florida where he received his bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering followed by two master's degrees, in nuclear science and engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University, and in computer science at UNF in 1995.

While still in high school, Touchton's first job was setting up mechanical voting machines, but his most enjoyable earnings were from playing the bass guitar. He then worked as an engineer for Westinghouse Electric Corp. in Pittsburgh, and worked his way up to serve as a senior engineer at the company's offshore power systems division in Jacksonville. In 1984, Touchton and several others ventured out on their own, starting PathTech Software Solutions Inc. which specialized in custom software development, electronic commerce, work- flow automation and network design.

One of the co-founders of PathTech was Touchton's wife, Cheryle, who started out as COO of the company, and later moved up to president/CEO.

"We were high school sweethearts and went to college together," Touchton said. In February of 2000, PathTech was acquired by Strategic Technologies, Inc., an information technologies company about 10 times the size of Path Tech based in Cary, N.C. In October of last year, Strategic Technologies acquired The Allied Group, a similar company serving the Northeast based in Hartford, Conn. In connection with that acquisition it was decided to blend the three companies into the "new" Strategic Technologies, Touchton said. Touchton monitors new software technologies and works closely with two of the company's major corporate partners IBM and Microsoft.

The company remains based in Cary but has major offices in Hartford, Reston, Va. and Jacksonville as well as a dozen field offices up and down the East Coast and as far west as Nashville. The firm employees more than 300 workers and serves 800 clients generating combined revenue of $180 million in fiscal year 2000.

Despite the expansion of his business interests outside Jacksonville, Touchton still finds time to enjoy his first love - music. He has been playing bass guitar at Southside Baptist Church in San Marco for the past eight years and also teaches youth Sunday school. It's all part of the commitment Bob Touchton brings to the community.