Conde McCullough came to Oregon State as an assistant professor in 1916. In 1919, he started the state highway division' s bridge department with four of the five graduating seniors in Civil Engineering and began a legacy of excellence in bridge design that is still recognized worldwide. He returned regularly to Oregon State to serve as an advisor and teach occasional night classes. From 1935-37 McCullough and Ray Archibald (BS CE 1919) moved to San Jose, Costa Rica, working on many bridges of the Inter-American Highway. Conde McCullough was a man of many parts; when he returned to Oregon in 1937, he became assistant state highway engineer and devoted a significant amount of time to developing economic analysis methods for many aspects of highway and bridge engineering.