Bruce began working in Asia while a graduate student. He had been planning to do his dissertation research in Africa, but changed his plans when given the opportunity to go to the Philippines. He was a Visiting Instructor in Rural Sociology at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture, a cooperative program with the Cornell University Graduate Education Program from 1969-71. He also served as a Visiting Instructor in Sociology at the Central Philippine University during this period, where he taught the sociology of development and social psychology. He met his wife, Jessie, during this period and they were married in 1971.

He returned to Asia a few years later as a Visiting Scientist at the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and research in Agriculture (SEARCA) and Visiting Professor of Resource Technology and Management, at the University of the Philippines, Los Banos in 1977-78. During this period he established a graduate program on research management at the two institutions.

>From 1996 to 1998, Bruce served as Visiting Professor at the University of Rennes and at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales in Paris where he taught graduate seminars on Development Issues in the Asia-Pacific and Social Change and Politics in Southeast Asia.

Bruce Koppel presented his paper "A Third Way to Asia's Recovery" at the 1999 EWCA Regional Conference held in Manila, January 27-29. Not only was his paper well received professionally, but his method of presentation - via a talking computer program - made the session one of the most interesting and well attended at the conference. The computer program "read" aloud Bruce's paper.

Bruce died on June 4, 2002 after suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) since 1996.  To read more about Bruce, please see articles published in the Honolulu Star Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser.