James C. Squire Ph.D.

James C. Squire teaches electrical and computer engineering students to think in code — because the electronics of the next fifty years get built as much in software as in hardware.

Squire is the Jamison-Payne Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Virginia Military Institute, where he has taught circuits, programming, and signal processing since 2000. He is the first professor in Virginia's history selected twice for the State Council of Higher Education's Outstanding Faculty Award — Rising Star in 2004, and again in 2025 — and holds VMI's Distinguished Teaching Award.

Before academia, Squire graduated from West Point in 1989 and served as a military intelligence officer in the Persian Gulf War, earning a Bronze Star. He completed his doctorate at MIT, where he taught, consulted in patent litigation, and conducted biomedical engineering research.

His two textbooks — Programming for Electrical Engineers: MATLAB and Spice and Introduction to Python and Spice for Electrical and Computer Engineers — grew out of two decades in the classroom, built specifically for ABET-accredited programs and the freshmen and sophomores learning to program for the first time. Squire holds 8 patents, with one pending, and has co-founded three technology startups: MATTS LLC, Tick Rover LLC, and VMIne LLC.

New material from James C. Squire starts the same place his courses do: with what students get stuck on, and what actually gets them unstuck.