Lary Mars ’82, who self-designed a computer science major before one existed at Muhlenberg, went on to a successful career in project management, working for NASA, Accenture, and Microsoft, among others.
After the publication of the Spring 2025 issue of Muhlenberg Magazine, which profiled the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics, Lary Mars ’82 emailed the editor. “Trivia question: Who was the very first computer science graduate at Muhlenberg College?” he wrote. “It was me in 1982, as a self-designed major.”
“I can pinpoint like three moments in time as to how I got the dumb luck of finding this amazing career that wasn’t even a career when I started college,” Mars, who went on to work on project management software and later project management consulting, said in a later interview.
As a first-year student, Mars joined the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, where nearly all of his brothers had cars. “Every one of my brothers in my class had a car,” he recalled. Mars had been working since age 13 as a golf caddy to save up for one, but when he told his father he planned to buy a car, he said, “Over my dead body.”
Mars, who at that point was a mathematics major, tried a different tactic. He told his father he wanted to be a computer science major, knowing that Muhlenberg did not, at that time, offer computer science classes but that other Lehigh Valley institutions did. His father asked how he’d get there, and Mars — who already knew he’d need a car to make this work — asked him to research bus routes for him.
“He calls me a week later and he says, ‘What’s your schedule look like next weekend? Why don’t you come home and we’ll get a car. The bus schedule is horrible,’” Mars said.
“I took two classes at Moravian [University], and I fell in love with the idea of computers,” Mars said. Because Muhlenberg didn’t yet offer a formal computer science major, Mars helped design one: “Most of the classes were self-designed, so I had one-on-one classes.” He even recalled classmates piggybacking off his coursework as interest in computing started to grow.
After graduating, Mars began working on project management software for NASA as part of a team at Booz Allen. But he quickly realized that while the work was technically impressive, it lacked something essential for him. “There was no human interaction,” he said. “It was horrible — like, I’m a people person.”
He proposed that the firm offer project management consulting services alongside their software: “I said, you really need to start a consulting branch of your company and start selling your consulting services along with the delivery of software.”
His suggestion led to significant changes in how the firm operated and helped launch his own career in project management consulting. He later worked with clients including Accenture, General Electric, IBM, Microsoft, and Time Warner, among many others.
Mars retired in 2016 but has continued to stay in touch with his fraternity brothers and holds a special place in his heart for Muhlenberg. “This school meant everything to me,” he said.
These student-athletes used their extra year of eligibility to compete for their teams while pursuing master’s degrees from the School of Graduate Studies.
