It’s homecoming week at Mountain Home, and one of several events for this week is the Night of Honors presented by the Mountain Home Education Foundation. The foundation will enshrine its 2022 Hall of Honor class this week, and this year’s distinguished alumnus is 1975 graduate and retired college professor Lonnie Bentley.
Bentley says he was surprised and honored when he learned of his upcoming induction.
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Following his graduation from Mountain Home, Bentley attended Arkansas State University. While in Jonesboro, he received a bachelor of science in business data processing in 1979 and a master of science in information systems two years later.
Bentley’s career path led to a tenure of over four decades as a professor of computer technology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He says he was highly recruited because he was the first graduate from the program he was in at A-State.
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During his time at Purdue, Bentley moved up in the ranks, getting promoted to associate professor and later to the full professor rank. At one point, he was asked to be the department head of computer and information technology, and he served in that role for 10 years.
Bentley later decided to go back to teaching. He is currently listed as a professor emeritus at Purdue, and he has also started his own business. He is the co-founder, a board member and the Vice President of Business Development for Broadband Antenna Tracking Systems, Inc. (BATS), an Indiana company based on automatic antenna aiming and tracking technology developed at the university.
Bentley says when he graduated from Mountain Home, he was unaware of how prepared he was for adult life. Looking back now, he says every teacher he had was a good one.
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The Mountain Home Education Foundation’s Night of Honors is scheduled for Thursday evening at the Vada Sheid Community Development Center on the campus of Arkansas State University-Mountain Home. The reception starts at 5:30, and the dinner and program will begin a half hour later. Tickets can be purchased, or gifts can be made in honor of Bentley and other inductees at mountainhomeeducationfoundation.org/donate.
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