Since the coronavirus drove life indoors and online this spring, Oregon State University-Cascades professor Patrick Donnelly has been teaching his computer science classes via Zoom. And while there’s virtually nothing unusual about classes meeting via the video conferencing portal — as any student or parent of one can attest — there’s something special about Donnelly’s approach.

Donnelly, 39, teaches his students while dressed as a skier. Or a new waver. Or a track-suited Eastern European personal trainer. Or a cowboy. Want more? In the video of his March 5 Computer Science 381 class, he can be heard off-screen saying, “What do you mean ‘It’s time’?”

A beat later, he walks into view, his hair under a towel and a spa-quality white robe tied on, “Well, good morning, everyone. We’re all still adjusting to our new routine.”

“It just makes you laugh every time,” said Kristen Orue, a 33-year-old junior in Oregon State University’s growing Computer Science program and a four-year resident of Bend.

The first time she saw him on screen, “I loved it,” Orue said. “The absolute first one, he wore a full tuxedo and pretended like, ‘I’m really under-dressed, you guys.’”

Donnelly begins class with a prerecorded video at 8 a.m., in which he wears a costume, followed by a live Zoom class at 9 a.m. that builds on what students saw in the video, which usually involves a less ornate costume.

Seeing her professor in a tux eased the jitters of that first day of class, Orue said.

“At 8 a.m., it’s your first class, and it’s your first time with a professor, and you’re already nervous and taking your first remote course,” she said. “And then he’s in a full-blown tuxedo to teach it. And then he shows up for class with a shower cap and then a pink robe, and he’s like brushing his teeth, ‘Oh, you’re here. OK, it’s starting.’ He makes it theatrical. It definitely eases the tension.”

As a longtime musician and singer, including opera, Donnelly does have experience as a performer. His interest in computers and music developed side by side growing up just outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“Even in middle school and high school, I was both in band and also taking computer science classes,” Donnelly said. “I grew up at that time in the late ’80s when personal computers were becoming prevalent, and so I was always playing the family IT person as a young person.

That interest in computers led him to take his first computer programming class in eighth grade.

At the same time, he played music, including the euphonium in high school band. He entered college at Washington University in St. Louis, where he double-majored in music and computer science.

Euphoniums being expensive, he began to use his voice as his instrument. He joined the college choir “and learned I could sing all right,” he said.

Most of his music background is in academics more so than performance, Donnelly said. In 2008, he earned three master’s degrees from Johns Hopkins University, one in computer science engineering and two in music — musicology and computer music research and technology — from the school’s Peabody Conservatory.

“I was always interested in music, and I always saw this connection between … music and math, and my instrument, so to speak, was to do that through computer science,” he said.

“I like to perhaps call myself a computational musicologist. I like to answer musical questions using machine learning.

Some of his research involves using algorithms to make determinations about sound and music, he said.

At Johns Hopkins, he studied computer science with John Sheppard, who became his mentor and eventual doctoral advisor. Sheppard recalls being impressed right away by Donnelly.

“He was pretty quiet, and he always sat in the back of the room, but I could tell just by looking at him that he was engaged, even though he said very little in class,” said Sheppard, adding that the fact that they were both musicians “gave us a connection to build on.”

Sheppard said he played a role in convincing Donnelly to pursue a Ph.D., “and then after he applied and was accepted (at Johns Hopkins), I dropped the bomb on him that I was leaving,” Sheppard said.

No problem. He just followed his advisor to Montana State University, where Sheppard had taken a job. There, Donnelly’s dissertation involved developing an algorithm that would teach a computer to recognize musical instruments.

“That can be fairly well done for single instruments. … I was trying complex combinations of instruments,” he said. “My algorithm was trying to pick out which instruments were playing, which is a hard problem when you start mixing signals together, because it’s not so easy to separate them back out.”

When Sheppard saw videos of Donnelly lecturing in costume, “This did not surprise me at all. Pat is very creative when it comes to teaching,” he said. “And as a result, he really engages the students.” At MSU, “The students loved him. They actually lobbied hard for us to hire him.”

Instead, Donnelly did two years of postdoctoral research at the University of Notre Dame, followed by 2 1/2 years at California State University-Chico.

Finally, in May last year, he and husband Ben Bahnsen, a real estate broker, moved to Bend, which Donnelly said he had been eyeing for a while. He taught his first classes here in the fall.

Yong Bakos, program lead in computer science at OSU-Cascades, said Donnelly’s work experience working with undergrads played a key role in his hiring.

“Most of our students are undergraduate students. For our research faculty, they have to innovate and find ways to incorporate undergraduate students in order to get things done,” Bakos said. “We were eager to bring him on board. It’s been fantastic. Patrick has been just an outstanding hire. He’s been able to hit the ground running, both in teaching excellence and also the undergraduate research.”

Donnelly is the first tenure-track professor in computer science at OSU-Cascades and splits his time between research and teaching. This term, he’s teaching two classes.

The decision to put on costumes is an extension of the comical aspect Donnelly brings to teaching computer science.

“I use a lot of humor in my class, normally, and I’m a little quirky, and I think that humor helps disarm the students on certain dimensions like nerves and apprehension,” he said. “So that’s always been one of the tools in my toolkit.”

So heading into quarantine, “I just happened to decide for the first lecture I was going to wear a tux, and just make a little spiel at the beginning about taking it seriously. After I did that, I just decided to keep it going.”

A friend with a big bag of Halloween costumes lent him assistance. “I borrowed the bag of Halloween costumes, and halfway through, here we are,” he said.

Each class, he acknowledges his get-up at the start, after which he just gives a deadpan lecture, “So hopefully it shouldn’t be too distracting,” he said.

“Some of them are making a calendar. That’s what they’re joking about,” Donnelly said. “Overall, I don’t have any complaints, at least, so I think they’re all enjoying it. If I elicit some type of response, I think I’ve been successful. I think a lot of them are laughing and having fun with it. Maybe some might just roll their eyes, but at least I caught their attention in a way.”

Bakos appreciates the effort.

“It’s not entertainment. We are not entertainers,” Bakos said. “But the truth is, it’s tough for our students to sit through two, four, six hours of Zoom meetings a day. And anything that we can do to make the learning experience engaging and interactive, or at the very least lighthearted, positive and fun, makes an impact.”

Future students can look forward to more fun with Donnelly.

“I’m really excited for this job opportunity that I have here. It’s kind of my dream job and location,” Donnelly said. “I really like my job here. It’s changed a little bit, of course, as everyone in the world’s has recently, but I decided to make the best of it, and try my best to help the students through this time as best as possible.”