The Department of Biology held their Awards Ceremony on Thursday, May 7, 2026. Two faculty and two staff received Career Achievement Awards for their dedication and service to the department. Read about the career of Facility Coordinator, Bruce Ritchie. Congratulations to Bruce on his hard work and achievements!
STAFF CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Bruce Ritchie
Marcus Garvey once said that a people without knowledge of their past history and culture is like a tree without roots. To find the living roots of the University of Iowa Department of Biology, one needs to look no further than Bruce Ritchie, Facility Coordinator. He is often said to be the eyes and the ears of the department, but just as importantly the heart of the department.
In an interview featuring Bruce for a previous Biology newsletter, Joshua Weiner, Associate Dean for Research and Infrastructure with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Biology, said at the time, “I shudder at the thought of the day when he retires, not only because we'll lose the excellent service he provides to all of us on a daily basis, but because in a very real sense a whole era of the department's growth and development will come to an end. I hope that day is far into the future!” Unfortunately, that day is upon us. As of June 30, 2026, Bruce will officially be retired.
Bruce has been affiliated with the Department of Biology for nearly 40 years. He began as a part-time student employee in Animal Care in the spring of 1983. After receiving his B.A. in General Studies in 1987 – a major that reflects his charmingly eclectic personality – he took a full-time position as a storekeeper in the department. In 1991, he migrated to his current position of receiving and delivering packages to all research labs in the department, coordinating construction and renovation projects, and being a resource for answering any facilities-related question among the many other countless duties and responsibilities that would be too long to list here.
Bruce has always wanted to help Biology faculty, staff, and students do the best science they can, and department chairs and administrators have long appreciated and nurtured the intellectual capacity of Bruce’s role as Facility Coordinator. He has received the Mary Louise Kelley Staff Excellence Award twice and was recently recognized with a Career Achievement Award at the annual Biology Awards Ceremony on May 7, 2026. Dr. Weiner summed it up best about Bruce with these comments, “[Bruce] is a wonderful reminder of what makes this a great place to work: hard-working, smart, funny, and dedicated people doing cool stuff. Bruce has truly dedicated his life to us for the past 3-4 decades, and we are all better because of it. His retirement is well-deserved.”
From everyone in the department, we all hope Bruce has a healthy and happy retirement! As Dr. Weiner said, “it’s well-deserved.”
Bruce recently wrote these comments below to share with the department.
“When I applied for a job doing animal care for the Zoology Department in 1983, I had no idea what a life-changing event it would become. I did know a little bit about the huddling of rodents and washing dishes, having been trained by my father, a microbiologist. The four and a half years of undergraduate education I received from the University of Iowa was interwoven around the hours of watering, feeding, and cleaning the population of mice, rats, and rabbits that were housed in our building. As I came close to graduation, Animal Care became centralized at Iowa and though I was offered a position in the Office of Animal Resources (OAR), it was not for me. Paul McGrew, the administrator for the department, and John Menninger, the Department Chair, offered me a position with plenty of activity and opportunities for growth and advancement, which I gratefully accepted.
I had little idea of my father’s relationships with the members of the faculty in the 70s and 80s but as I had contact with them through daily interactions, many went out of their way to express their admiration and respect for him and transferred those feelings to me.
“We rescued Bruce, and Bruce rescued us,” was the way Gary Gussin described my inclusion in the collegial community, and though I rarely had a clue as to what people’s research was about, I have always understood how difficult and lonely a life as a researcher can be and to whatever extent I could inject a bit of humor or express a question that a layperson might ask, I did.
The graduate students when I started are now spread all around the globe from research and faculty positions, to even a Dean of a prestigious dental college. Many of my fondest moments certainly involved them, such as holding hands and walking with Salil Lachke, but the collegial sense of buoying up the department as we helped Dawson Mohler clean and pack his household to move in a day, or helping Jeff Denburg deal with damage from the derecho, truly made me feel ‘We’re all in this together.’ This may seem like an unusual comment in a community of such diversity, but I felt it shortly after joining the department.
There are stories I could tell of Dr. Wu sitting me down to watch Tai Chi exercises for arthritis, or Josh Weiner helping me navigate the Miles Davis’ music and the end of his life, but Harold Beams, Michael Solursh, Barbara Stay, and Eugene Spaziani, they’ve all made me a better person from me knowing them. To Veena Prahlad, Debashish Bhattacharya, Anne Calof, and Anna Malkova, your enthusiasm was what made you special to us and to others as well; and of course, Jeremy Richardson, the most indefatigable seeker of knowledge and its practical applications I’ve known in all my years.
It’s been a wonderful 43 years (minus a small hiatus), but as I told the office staff, I’m planning on returning a time or two each year to make chili or soup, and for sure during the holiday break.”
Bruce
