Mr. Hoff is Oratory’s new physics teacher. He brings a lot of in-the-field experience to Oratory, being an engineer for 30 years, specifically in the medical field of engineering. Mr. Hoff hopes to bring a unique perspective to his students through his field experience and provide them with real-world examples.
Mr. Hoff grew up in New Jersey, in Essex County. As a child, he was mechanically inclined, interested in taking things apart and putting them back together. He talked about working on old speaker cabinets specifically. His grandfather was a machinist, who was also an inspiration. Mr. Hoff’s brother also went on to become an electrical engineer. Mr. Hoff went to a Catholic grammar school and then to Seton Hall Prep for high school. He went to Villanova University and got a degree in mechanical engineering, completing his master’s degree at Stevens. He started working at Datascope as a mechanical engineer, designing patient monitors. He noted that his first boss, who taught him a lot about engineering, had a big impact on him and was a role model of sorts. He then joined the cardiac assist team and worked on pumps, spending 25 years on that. He noted that it felt like it made a difference. Indeed, cardiac pumps, also called Ventricular Assist Devices (VADs), can help people with heart problems to live longer lives with their loved ones. He also talked about the rise in software engineering today, which can make things a bit more complicated, but more reliable. While he was not a coder, he often talked to the coding team. He wants to have his students do the same thing by talking to others to build knowledge of something they may not know. While at Datascope, he also did validation work too. Validation work is critical, as the products his company was working on were depended upon by people quite literally for their lives,
After being an engineer for 30 years, he decided to become a teacher. He decided to become a teacher because at Datascope there was a program where interns from NJIT and Stevens came in. He found he enjoyed teaching them more than the design work he was doing, and decided to pursue a career in teaching. He saw there was a job opening at Oratory, and setting it was a Catholic high school, took the job. Currently, Mr. Hoff resides in Boonton and is an active member of its parish. He has two children, a son in 6th grade and a daughter who is a junior in high school. Mr. Hoff is also an avid hiker. He enjoys playing the guitar, which he has been doing since high school, doing that for the better part of a decade. He also is a runner and coaches middle school cross-country and track. Mr. Hoff hopes to pursue a great career teaching at Oratory. His advice for his students is to learn about multiple disciplines and be open minded, as conversing with the coders in his company helped open his mind to software engineering and the huge change it has become today. One final piece of advice he had for his students is if they can’t figure it out on paper, go to the lab. He has enjoyed his time at Oratory, and hopes to make his class the best he can for his students.