Teaching Associate Professor

Biographical Sketch

Currently a Teaching Associate Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ron Bergquist is the son of a couple who met and married in Australia during the Second World War.

Born in Idaho in 1946, Dr. Bergquist attended elementary school in Hawaii and Delaware, and high school and university in Texas. Upon his graduation with a BA in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968, he was commissioned through Air Force ROTC as a 2nd Lieutenant. His Air Force career began with training in Colorado, followed by two tours in Vietnam. He was then assigned to stateside duties in Texas, Virginia, California, Alabama, and at the Pentagon, and spent eight years in three different assignments in Germany. It was during his assignment to a Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron in Texas that he met his wife, Drucilla, a Virginia native.

After over 26 years in the Air Force, Dr. Bergquist retired on 1 January 1995 at the rank of Colonel and moved to Pinebluff, North Carolina. In November 1995, he was elected to the Town Board of Commissioners and served a two-year term as the Mayor pro tem and as the Commissioner for Parks and Recreation.

His work for the Town of Pinebluff prompted an interest in information management. After a discussion about the topic with the librarian at the Pinebluff Public Library, he began his second stint as a graduate student in January 1997 and was accepted into the SILS Master's Program in March of the same year. He graduated with a Master of Science in Library Science degree in May 1999 and began his doctoral studies in August of the same year. During the last year of his MSLS work and the first year of his doctoral studies, Dr. Bergquist was a Graduate Research Assistant. From the summer of 2000 to the spring of 2006, he was a Teaching Fellow, teaching courses to both undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Information and Library Science. After earning his Doctor of Philosophy in Information and Library Science in May 2006, he was appointed an adjunct professor in the summer of 2006, a Clinical Assistant Professor in January 2010, and a Teaching Associate Professor in July 2020.

He was awarded the Deborah Barreau Award for Teaching Excellence twice, winning the Adjunct Award in 2007 and the faculty award in 2016.

He was also the Coordinator for the Undergraduate Program from 2013 to 2016, and the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2016 to 2020.

Selected writings

The Role of Airpower in the Iran-Iraq War

1988
Bergquist, Ronald E., Major
Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press.

Everybody's Talking at Me: Information Flow in a Command and Control Environment

1999
Bergquist, Ronald E.
Master's Paper

Designing to support collaborative scientific research across distances: The nanoManipulator example

2001
Sonnenwald, D.H., Bergquist, R., Maglaughlin, K., Kupstas-Soo, E., Whitton, M.
In E. Churchill, D. Snowdon, A. Munro (Eds.), Collaborative Virtual Environments (pp. 202-224). London: Springer Verlag

“It could have been bigger, but its residents like it as is”: Small town libraries in Moore County, North Carolina

2006
Bergquist, Ronald E.
A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Information and Library Science. Chapel Hill

“It could have been bigger, but its residents like it as is”: Small town libraries in Moore County, North Carolina

2009
Bergquist, Ronald E.
Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller