Purdue ECE alumnus Paul McEnroe earns unique honor
Paul McEnroe, who earned an MSEE in 1960 from Purdue University, has been named the 2022 Vaquero of the Year by the Santa Ynez Historical Museum in Santa Ynez, CA.
Immediately after earning his MSEE, McEnroe began on a 23-year career at IBM. McEnroe and his engineering teams developed the ubiquitous barcode that we see on almost all products today, as well as the scanners that read them. He also developed the Token Ring network technology, custom chips and IBM’s first intelligent terminal. Moving west to Silicon Valley, he developed wafer-scale chip technology, a vital component found in electronics today.
Upon his retirement in 1992, McEnroe embarked on a second career – owning and running, along with his wife, Tina, the 1,000-acre Rancho la Purisima — a horse breeding and boarding facility and working cattle ranch located just north of Santa Barbara, CA. Daily, he is riding horse, checking on cattle, working on the horse breeding program and running the boarding operation. McEnroe also continues to compete in Rodear competitions, where riders and their cow dogs maneuver a small group of cattle through a number of obstacles in a set amount of time. He has served as president and state director of the Santa Barbara County Cattlemen’s Association, and was named Livestock Person of the Year for Santa Barbara County.
To ensure the ranch remains an open space and traditional Santa Ynez Valley topography, La Purisima has been placed in the Land Trust of Santa Barbara County. Due to this stewardship of the land, many more accomplishments, his philanthropic contributions to the area and love of the ranching life, McEnroe was selected as the 2022 Vaquero of the Year.
McEnroe is part of the 2001 Class of Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineers. This is the highest honor the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue bestows on its alumni. Purdue’s College of Engineering selected McEnroe for its highest honor, the Distinguished Engineering Alumni, in 2018.