CGS - College of General Studies - University of Pittsburgh

Alumni Profile: Robert C. De Haven

As the chair, president, and CEO of Quality Systems Inc., a company that has grown to become the nucleus of a billion dollar international corporation, Bob De Haven directly and indirectly supervised thousands of people, many with advanced academic degrees.

"And none of them could write," De Haven recalls. "It wasn't like 90 percent of the people we hired were unable to express themselves well in writing. Virtually none of them could do it.

“Not only couldn’t they write, they couldn’t speak well enough to prepare and deliver an effective business presentation. And yet, these were very smart people.”

What De Haven had there was a failure to communicate. To remedy it, he created in-house writing and speaking courses based on the technical writing and rhetoric courses he had taken in Pitt’s College of General Studies (CGS).

“I even used the books and notes I’d saved from my CGS technical writing course,” he says, with a laugh.

That CGS course had been an eye-opener for De Haven, who earned a BA in economics from the college in 1971. “Before taking that course, I’d thought writing was some artsy process, but in CGS I learned that writing essentially is a craft,” he says. “It’s all about organizing and expressing your thoughts clearly. Suddenly, the whole thing made sense. Later, when I had to write proposals for contracts to do computer science work, I knew how to do it.”

Practicality was a priority for De Haven in his college career. To this day, he disdains what he calls “ivory-tower professors” who have never worked outside academia and teaching assistants “more interested in finishing their degrees than in teaching.” Following desultory efforts as a full-time student at Rutgers and Pitt, he thrived taking career-oriented evening courses in CGS.

“I was impressed that my CGS instructors tended to have important day jobs or had retired following successful careers,” says De Haven. “I remember one of my teachers, a retired executive from Gulf Oil, who would meet with us after class at Frankie Gustine’s,” a landmark Oakland bar/restaurant and gathering place for the Pitt community. “Over a pitcher of beer, we would talk about business world events and practical application of economic theory.”

Outside and inside the classroom, contact with CGS faculty and his fellow students helped De Haven mature into a motivated undergraduate. “Prior to that, I was uninterested in any academic environment,” he acknowledges. “It wasn’t my professors’ fault; I just saw no practical value to what I was doing.”

Less than three decades after graduating from CGS, De Haven fulfilled the American Dream of selling his company and retiring young—at age 50—to sail his yacht and putter around his residences in Colorado and Virginia.

Not surprisingly, a few months into retirement he grew bored. So, De Haven jumped at an opportunity to establish a new Harley dealership, Patriot Harley-Davidson in Fairfax, Va. (As a corporate CEO, he had raced motorcycles to relieve stress.) The company sells Harley-Davidson motorcycles, accessories, and apparel, and services bikes.

De Haven remains revved up about CGS as well as Harleys. “CGS, in my opinion, offers a great combination of academics and avocation,” he says. “That combination really struck a chord with me.”