Good afternoon, my name is Bill More. I'm a retired family member of
industrial engineering. Today is friday May 22nd
january 22nd 2010.
I'm interviewing dr William Lewis. Bill Lewis who is a started industrial
engineering, redesigned etcetera for the A. S. U. R. A history video
history project.
Okay. Why did you choose the issue?
Well I spent 3.5 years in Chicago. That told me I didn't want real cold
weather anymore. I've really never really heard of Arizona State
University until a friend of mine interviewed out here from Northwestern
didn't take the job but said how great a place it was. And so I applied, I
had offers from five schools. It turned out the issue was the lowest of
the five offers. $1,000 spread Gundam iron for the high and low. But I
like the the university of the climate. I'd like to see the Gambrel who
was the chair of the department sign and I like the rest of the fact that
they were here and that's why I decided to come here.
What was your first? Thank you assistant prof in industrial engineering
teaching primarily operations research, probability statistics. I came
here I would say the spring of 66 was my first semester
describe your career progression stupidity. Oh We added 1 to that. Tell me
where your offices were. Okay. Oh boy. Uh
my office is originally in the wind
and it was in g wing probably up until 1980
actually share an office with you for quite a few years actually, probably
when I left the key way I've been sharing off you probably up until then
remember.
I can't remember when we split the last two years you were up there. Okay.
But I was in G wing Keep thinking G to 52 for a while. I'm not sure the
other room members. It was in G. Wing. He got promoted associate professor.
Mhm. seven years into my tenure here or stay here and
was moved in over to the old University services building on the second
floor where we start the computer science program. We left the iii program
instead of the computer science department. And we had our offices over in
the old second floor of administrative services. Roland Hayden actually
asked me to spend the year at 79 80 years forming a program. And I was at
the point where I was ready for full prof. And so I told roman I can't
spend that time doing administrative work effectively if I want to get
promoted to full professor. And Roland said I'll tell you what you get the
program going and I'll see if you get promoted. And he was true to his
word. He got me promoted without a good publication records. I was never
but I would consider a heavy research by any means very lightweight. Had a
couple of very large grants, a lot of lot of millions of dollars but they
had nothing to really what I consider research or what the university
today would consider his research. But then he promoted me, got promoted
in. I guess it was 80, time school year to full professor. When Roland
asked me if I wanted to become chair of computer science, I can remember
thinking, you know, why would anybody want to leave the role faculty going
to the administrator? Because I used to love teaching and hated
administrative. We're always glad somebody else did it. And I I took the
position for a year as chair CS. And Roland was supposed to look for a
full time chair. And about halfway through I realized, you know, I was
really enjoying this. I was really enjoying the administrative and it was
just one of those situations. And it's really funny too because about a
year after being an administrator, the faculty don't view you as one of
them anymore. You're now one of the enemies. And it became very obvious
very quickly, you know, I always thought I was a faculty member, but the
faculty didn't view it that way after a year or so of being a department
chair. And then when you move up to associate dean, I mean you were then
part of the enemy, part of them and vice provost, it got even worse. I was
in that position until 85. Roland Hayden was dean of the college in Roland
actually, I got to the point where I realized I was not probably
involving the faculty as much an administration of CS. So that should be,
I was just making the decisions. The fact that we're happy with the play
as bugs in a row. They didn't care they before being bothered. But I
realized I wasn't, you know, consulting him enough and so on and I figured
it was time to step down, let somebody else come over. And so Roland gave
me a position of associate dean, which I was in that position until 93 94.
No public had come in his proverbs and we had the same name of lee Allen
who was the effectively the ceo of the university wasn't called that at
the time but he was running the computing center and uh the faculty just
hated the alley. Just hated leon he wouldn't make a decision
if you would just and and the staff hated the out. The E. T. Staff wasn't
called I. RM. Information resource management. So dan bring myself and
Andy philippa ca's what's a Milk black and said you gotta do something
about this. And Milk called in a team of consultants from com which now it
calls, it was common at the time and three people came in and they
reviewed the central I. RM group and they made a comment to Milk that
they're spending a lot of money and he's a nice guy but he won't make a
decision and everybody hates him. You've got to get rid of. And so milk
basically gave called the Andy and dan breaking myself back into his
office and said okay which one of you? Turkey is going to help out for a
year and the other to step back a step. And uh I said okay I mean I'll try
to do it. So the 93 94 academic year I was sort of serving as interim
on the telecommunication and academic side. And Connie McNeill was serving
as interim on the administrative side.
And about halfway through the year I want a remote so you know you aren't
advertising for anybody yet. You know you need to get somebody in here to
do this job. And he and he said would you apply for it I said well I'm not
going to apply for it if you're gonna open up to the world. I said but if
you make it just on campus I'll apply for it. He said okay we'll make it
just on campus. And I said okay I'll apply for it and apply for it. Got
the job as vice provost at that time for us for information technology. We
changed the name from I. R. M. I. T. Served in that capacity until
2006. I guess it was I think that was about the time frame when I stepped
down went back to I took my first sabbatical first
sabbatical leave and take it ever taken a sabbatical leave.
It was one of the things where I always thought that if you I didn't think
there was anything I'd rather be doing than what I was doing. And so I
never took a sabbatical. I very consciously I told my daughter who's now
assistant profit, small school particular sabbaticals when every time you
can get them take them, you you need to do that. But I never took one. And
so when I stepped down, I took a year's sabbatical and then went back to
the program. Actually, I didn't even finish a year sabbatical. I was I was
going to take a semester sabbatical lesson.
I was taking a year's sabbatical and in november of the of oh six, the
cherished CS Punch came to be instead the I need an assistant chair,
nobody is stepping forward to do it. And I said, I don't mind, I'll do it
when Punch was sort of the director of the the School of Computing and
informatics addicts have that set up or something like that. So I took
over and took over the academic programs are back in in the CS of those at
that time, served in that capacity until May of a wait when I retired.
Well,
probably the thing that that I I find the most enjoyable thing I ever did
hear the issue was forming the CS program, getting, getting the faculty
together and getting them doing all the things that had been done to set
up a new program that didn't exist here before getting all the approvals,
excuse me and so on. That was probably the single most enjoyable time that
I probably never had here the issue and it was very rewarding. It was just
as I say, just a good experience. Roland Hayden came in in 79 as dean of
the college and I get this knock on the door up on my second floor office
, You're right, I was I wasn't sharing it with you at that time and I got
this knock on the door and uh I had I was sort of infamous infamous for a
messy office piles high and wide, it's really bad. Uh and I get the stock
on the door and just rolling Hayden and he opens the door, I opened the
door and he comes in he said, I just I've heard about your office, just
wanted to go up and see it. And then he said that's not really why I came
, he said I wanted to ask you why we didn't have a computer science
program at HQ. And I turned them and I said you know that's the most
refreshing thing. I've heard Dean say because we tried with
the Thompson to do something computer science and we would have nothing to
do with it Because he got burned by a computer in about 70 and he would
have nothing to do with computers or computer science. And he then uh said
we need a computer science program. And so we got a group of us, there
were seven at the time, myself and bob Lovell from I. E. Ah dave venus and
mars would fill from double E. Jim college fellow brian hand she and Gerry
ford from mathematics. We started having clandestine meetings.
We would go out to off campus to have lunch and take three hour meeting
times and so on, trying to see what we can do to get a computer science
program going. Mathematics was trying to start a computer program and
there jurisdiction. That's why there was three people over there. And then
uh Industrial engineering actually had the first, a better credited
computer Engineering program. We were the year they credited that the
first year they credited five. Asia was one of those five. So we had one
of the first live, a better credited industrial engineering, industrial
computer engineering programs that was run out of industrial engineering.
And then doubly had a computer option. So we pulled some faculty from all
43 of those programs and started meeting trying to come up with a how to
get a computer science program going talk about what we would do and so on.
I ran into a lot of resistance from liberal arts and sciences,
particularly Allen Feldstein over in mathematics. Allen was sort of the
nemesis at the time. He was a numerical analyst and he thought anything
other than liberal arts was was a bastard program that nobody wants
anything to do with over here was the poor child or whatever. And the
three gentlemen from mathematics didn't really care. They just they were
sold a bill of goods that would be a computer science program and they
wanted computer science program because they were really computer
scientists. And their degree was computer science.
Two people from double E. While they weren't computer science, they were
doubly computing like hardware people. And then bob Lovell, who actually
left before the department really was started. And myself were the two
from industrial engineering. And we got together and finally got the
university to agree to give a greater program, got the Board of Regents
approval In 1980. It started as a full computer science program Computing
center. We had was actually uh the old president's office that was over
the administration building at the back door. And it came out through this
this room which was our computing center was where the door came out. And
I remember when we first started running computers over there, he created
too much noise from the president's office. So we had to soundproof the
door in that wall in order to make it so that the computer center that was
when we were setting up didn't cause problems with the president's office
just rang gangbusters, couldn't hire faculty fence, given all the
positions we could we could hire. Uh and we we we had 1100 undergraduates
at one time in the probe. Just a monsters got her, got her master's degree
approved, got her PhD a program from approved all in the first five years.
Just one faculty member is still on the faculty. It's Jim Kalla fella,
he's now associate dean of Engineering
but he's still a member of the program. I am.
Let's just say I enjoy working with that group of Of six other people. I
enjoyed the support we got from the university, from administration.
I enjoyed the politics of liberal arts that was sort of fun trying to get
things done and overcoming some, I'll say roadblocks at Howard Feldstein
tried to throw it away and so on. But I would say that was probably the
most enjoyable single time
Back in 1985.
Union Carbide had this disaster in India called
Yeah. And where they had a chemical leak That killed 2000 people in the
city of Bhopal. They had a pesticide plant, fertilizer and pesticide plant
in Bhopal. And I had a faculty associate who was a U. S. Citizen but
indian december and
VJ Sin if you remember VJ or not. And he uh he was a part time, well he
was actually full time instructor for us in computer science and
he and I wrote a proposal to Union Carbide to set up a vocational training
center to try to rehab people who had been injured in the Union Carbide
disaster. And we spent
it was sort of hilarious. I don't, don't think I ever understood really
how private sector companies worked as well as I did after that, we went
back to, we wrote this proposal, I got a phone call from the guy who was
the chief purchasing agent for Union Carbide in Danbury Connecticut and
said, we got your proposal, we're not sure what we're gonna do. We've had
a lot of proposals and about, but we'll let you know and about a week and
a half, two weeks later, we get this call saying, uh, could you come up to
Danbury Connecticut to visit with us and talk to us about what you'd like
to do or what you, what you're proposing?
So we went up to Danbury and we met with the chief purchasing agent, four
or 5 other people. And then we had a 15 minute meeting with Warren
Anderson who was chairman of the Board of Union Carbide, which turned into
2.5 hours with you with Warren Anderson.
And this guy, Vijay was sort of a pushing person I guess would be the best
, best, best way to call it personality was just pushing. And so, um,
we, we finished this long meeting that lasted a lot longer than anybody
thought it was going as we were leaving VJ turned around and he said, well
, why don't we hear from you? And the guy who director person, he said,
well, you know soon. And he turned to Warren Anderson and said, when will
we hear from you? He said well how much do you need for the feasibility
study? We had a feasibility study in the budget that was all we were doing
or proposing And we said you know $200,000. He said okay you got it. And
he said go ahead and do it. And uh we left and walked out of the office
with purchasing director and I said what do we need to do now? He says
nothing, I've got my orders, I'll cut you a check for $200,000. We
actually came home with a check made out to the university For $200,000
and every word proposal that went to the university.
So we had to had to put together a proposal sent a 3rd Union carbide Heart
Henry who was the VP of research, Henri, Henri reasons VP of research and
Henry just got decide himself on this one and the But you know we worked
it out and and so on. But here I had this check for $200,000 and we go
back every quarter And we were funded about $2 million dollars a year for
almost a year and a half and we go back every quarter we come back with
half a million dollars champion. It wasn't anything. You know you said hey
there will be no, no no we don't want you to put any of your money out,
we'll cover you up front. And they just sent us a check, you must account
for it.
And I later asked the purchasing director why they were, what I thought
was very easy to work with, he said, well we've worked with the university
before. We know you have enough checks and balances, we don't have to
worry about your spending the money badly, you'll spend it okay enough,
people will review that, we don't have to worry about. And it was very
interesting, but that was a very, very, I'll say interesting time for the
first time I ever, I didn't, I didn't have a passport at the time in the
first place I really went was India. And I actually remember the first
trip over there we, I packed, I've heard all the horror stories and so
this is when you take water on the plane, you know, and so on. And I
packed bottled water and in these little uh boxes of fruit juice and so on.
Never used the water, practicing our peanut butter, not knowing you know
what it was gonna be like in the world. And they loved it when I left the
stuff over there with some of the people we work with. But it was a very,
I'll say that was a very interesting time. I learned an awful lot about
people I learned for instance, we, we had a lady in Bhopal who was a
disciple of Mother Teresa, who was that lady we worked with Interpol and
uh we were trying to get in to see the Finance Minister of India. We
couldn't get into it. And so she knew his wife and she got us invited for
tea At his house at Night one night in New Delhi. And so we go and meet
with him and his wife in New Delhi at home over tea. And then the next
morning he saw us in his office and uh you know I think about what we
pulled off in India compared to what it would be like to try to do the
same thing here in this country just wouldn't happen. But we uh say met
with Finance minister company later became Prime Minister another country.
And it was hilarious. They were in the process of trying to get around
the corruption in the indian government. He kept telling us you know if
you come running to any of this interesting corruption and bribes you let
me know and I'll take care of it. The worst problem we had was bribes in
the indian embassy in D. C. And they wouldn't do anything for you unless
you greased the pole. We're trying to do something. We get this call, we
were trying to get our visa for some reason we were having trouble getting
a visa at one point to get back in the country. And uh the guy one of the
under under ambassadors called us and said I can get your visa. He said
you know my my wife would really like some some silk from a certain story
in New Delhi. And we said well sure we'll get it. You can just pay for us
when you know I can't pay you for it. We don't make very much and you know
it's just one of those things and I felt Turkeys. What do you think of the
greatest challenge? Sure.
Well
one of one of them was this uh problem that we had with the fiscal plan.
That was a challenge. It really wasn't something that was not in what I
would consider my wheelhouse of expertise by any means. I was more or less
a mathematician, applied mathematician, operations research, type person
statistics, probability and computing science. I wasn't a mechanical
engineer that these were not things that were something that I was felt
comfortable with at first but I think it was an extremely challenging time
and it was one of very rewarding uh when when we were able to get it done
and it worked the way it did as we found the problems were able to solve.
When I first went over to milk collect as vice provost. I guess probably
the second year I was there milk had a biologist. Alright let's plant
sciences was what Kathie Church was something like that or botany or
something. And walter Harris was a musician. Music major. And we had a
problem on campus with the chilled water system, the thermal storage and
chilled water and we had just redone the cooling system in what was A. S.
B. And 105 days after it was turned on, it started leaking.
And
there was something wrong with the chilled water systems running through
it. And milk called me at one time because he was getting under an awful
lot of pressure from the campus and a couple of people on campus and
actually generally with joe west at the west campus who was saying, you
know, you're mistreating your plant, physical plant things are wrong,
you're not running it right. And so milk asked me to sort of take charge
and figure out what was going on. He says you're the only one that's an
engineer and we need an engineering background and I thought I'm an
industrial here, I'm not a mechanical engineer, I'm not, you know, and so
on. So I can remember the christmas break, I went over the library and I
just buried myself in the library to read about thermal storage, about
their chillers, water chillers and and all this stuff to try to get as
much knowledge as they could. And then basically as far as the physical
plant was concerned, Janice Burton started reporting to me temporarily for
probably a year until we can figure out what was wrong with the physical
plant, the water system Uh turned out we then found out that we were
pumped. We were uh what was supposedly a sealed system, we were
replenishing 100,000 gallons of water a day. Yeah, it was leaking that
band. We found leaks. I hired a mechanical engineering firm to come in and
do a complete study of the piping system to find dead spots. To find leads
, find thin spots in the pipe. Uh probably took in a year, probably took
10 to 15 years of life out of the cast iron pipes that were running This
chilled water. These are 40" pipes, big pipes out of the thermal storage
system and found out what the trouble was. We had what was called the
nitro find bacteria in the water and it was attacked new copper. So the
copper coils were being eaten from the inside out. Old copper gets tender
on the inside and the tinning protected it from these bacteria that was in
the order. And so we hired a water treatment firm to come in and confirm
what we, what we found. We found some poisons to put in it to kill
everything. Nobody was drinking this water. It's a sealed system, but it
wasn't your drinking water. And we got it under control. But that was just
a I'll see you another
enjoyable time. It was realizing that engineering background that you
could solve problems. It wasn't just what your specialty area was
The students system that we had here. The issue was was put in operation
in 1980. Building herself served this campus tremendously well For 20 plus
years, 25 26 years. Um But we knew there were things we couldn't do, we
couldn't do flexible scheduling. We couldn't do a whole bunch of other
things with it because it was just wasn't designed that way. But we
couldn't afford to put in a full system because it was a $20 million
dollars type project. And so S. AP which is the largest software vendor in
the world, although now oracle maybe tying with them or with them. He had
him since he bought something. Um But they were not in the academic
community at all. And so in 1999
we formed a partnership with S. A. P. To help them develop a student
information system and for a year they did all their requirements
gathering here at a. S. U. On a student information system.
And we participated we had focus groups, telling the educating them about
what higher education was. And it was hilarious. They didn't have any idea
what higher education was.
They
they they did scheduling systems to schedule conference rooms or schedule
other things and they thought it would be trivial to scheduled classes and
they didn't even understand the technology, the terminology of education.
And so we had an awful lot of education to do with them as to what really
what a higher education institution is and
what the terminology wasn't nothing else that you needed to use in higher
education. And I can remember the name of Dietmar failure. Who was ceo of.
No, he was he was the
second deputy ceo, I guess was the second command of A. S. A. P. Germany
one time he was over here visiting and he said Bill, he said, you told me
that I had no idea how complicated the student information system was. And
he said, we now realize it's probably the most complicated system we've
ever tried to develop. And we then went through this. And then it turned
out that S A. P. You either install everything with ASAP or you install
nothing. Everything is tightly integrated. And so while they were giving
us the students system and the support and so on, it was still going to
cost us another $10 million dollars to get the people the HR and finance
system put it in and we just didn't have the money. And so actually in
early 2000 we walked away from it and left it left to go
milk trying to to get funding for it. He felt that he couldn't get certain
key people on campus who are nameless to uh back it appropriately. And so
he couldn't really run.
And so we decided at that time that we spent an awful lot of human capital
trying to put this system in and that we probably couldn't try right away
to go to something else. We needed to. I'll say, let things, let the dust
settle and see what happened in the marketplace, we were at the same time
, by the way, we're doing the wives who came mediation of our old system.
It turns out by the way that N A. U. Back in about 80
six or 87, we actually gave a you are students system and they handled it
until they put their people's souls system. Obviously they may change
their own changes to that. But they ran it for a long time serving them.
You have a tried to develop their own students system, worked with the
company and it became a disaster. Just an absolute disaster. Um, I was
having to report every month of the board of regions because all the
budget overrides and all the excess costs That they were looking for was a
project that was going to cost them $8 million 28 million or something
ridiculous like that. They've got nothing else. I didn't have a system of
the work. And the so it was interesting times,
another area is in your role as vice provost. You see that keep the
infrastructure of the systems on campus pretty well up with the state of
the art. You seem to have pretty good support from provost's office. I
wonder if you might talk a little bit about the changes in the
infrastructure that went on, how some of the support was pretty much
centralized and it went out to the colleges and I think it's back now.
Again, it's more sexualized now than it was. Um When I first moved into
the vice provost position, we were,
we did the decentralization and moved staff out to the colleges. Um the
engineering colleges always saying staff and computing. As far as I'm
concerned, engineering probably had better staff than the central IT group.
We read the first networking it was done in engineering affairs of for
instance, we did a lot of that stuff. And uh so I realized that that
support needed to be closer to the faculty level and centralized least.
That's what I thought. And so we started pushing out staff to the
colleges. We put about, We took about 45 or 50 of the central it staff and
assigned them and gave them for for a few years probably to their sort of
joint appointments. That is, I would pay them, but they really got
marching orders from the colleges. After about two years we just
transferred the lines to the colleges because it became difficult to do
evaluations and things like that when we weren't controlling them
centrally, et cetera. So we just moved them out. But I, my whole
philosophy was, you always want to move support staff as close to the
faculty as possible so that they had a better idea of what was going on
within the unit and the like, so that was one of the things that we did at
that point in time.
I will say that I I think I had a tremendous advantage as the vice provost
and then later C. I. O. And the fact that milk click loved computers, the
efforts that Milk put forward during his first few years here to make sure
every factory member had a computer on his desk, even if they didn't know
how to use it or turn it on. I can remember those times we were devoting
spending money to the colleges so that they could, at the end of the year
we take whatever slush fund mill had left out that he hadn't had to spend
and we distributed out into a computer purchase program by computing for
faculty desktops and things like that. So Milk always loved technology and
he he really understood the I think the the role that technology could
play and has played in moving the university forward,
making sure we had adequate networking that we supported things properly
so that the network was there, that we always had enough bandwidth to meet
their university needs. Those are important things to milk and became
important to me too to make sure that we did those things.
What kind of advice would you give young people in choosing their college
?
I mean coming to issue or? Well let's let me split that apart in terms of
general careers, they high school seniors and in terms of academic careers
, students who were eventually looking in that direction. Well, you know,
it's interesting. I talked, I used to talk an awful lot to high school
students about careers and going to college and things like that. And they
would all talk about their, the smaller schools and so on. And I many
times told students, I said, you know, the nice thing about the issue is
if you want a course in basket weaving, we probably have a course in
basketball that you could take if you wanted anything. And of course
almost anything you could probably find a day issue, whereas you're not
gonna find it at a smaller school and you're gonna find choice is much
harder to come by. And a smaller school. So there are some advantages to a
large school. And I've told him many times that it was the experience you
have, the success you have is up to. You don't rely upon the faculty being
your advisor and telling you what to do. You better know what to do. You
better read the catalogs, you better know what your degree requirements
are. Don't rely on what somebody else is doing. And so I've told many
times students to, to not shy away from the big schools that there are
some advantages to a big school. And um, I would tell them even today that
you can get as fine an education of the issue is you get anyplace in the
country. The quality of your education is depending a lot upon you as an
individual and what you want to do and how you go about it. But you can
make yourself have a slight in education here as you can any place in the
country. And so I told him primary look for where your best financial
opportunities are. Look at what your personal situation is. Can you be
away from home? I used to talk to some people on indian reservations and
their big problem there is that they're they're societal, they don't leave
the reservation at least they won't believe any reservations and it was
very difficult for them to take a semester come down here and be away from
mom and dad are particularly mom matriarchal society. A lot of indian
tribes and talk to them a lot about you know think about where you're
going and how close you need to be to your family. Maybe any of you might
be a better choice for you but you're closer than where they lived and so
on and that type of thing. So I guess I would feel very,
I would give that type of advice that you need to look at where you get
your best financial help. Need financial help. Don't look at the the ivy
league schools just because they're ivy league schools. You're not getting
any better education there than you are at other schools. You know I look
at, I have some friends over at stanford and they're they're average G. P
. H. Stanford is very very hot. They just don't funk students period. It's
not that they're any better students. They just have great inflation.
That's literally true. They can save grade inflation and I think that's
true in a lot of schools a lot of the better name schools I think they
have great insulation in many cases. It's not that they're any harder. I
don't think you get any better education. I went to my back, both my
bachelor's and master's and PhD were private schools Northwestern Journey
Private School Back in the Big 10 11 now. Yes but it's very private school
in there. Everything else is state schools, johns Hopkins is private, is
one of the private schools of all ivy league and so on. But I came out
here as a state school and I don't think that we gotta get any better
education of those other private schools. Very high dollar schools that a
student could get here in the issue. Now as far as academic careers going
into academia,
I guess I would tell people today that you've got to, you've got to
realize that teaching is only part of the job and if you're only going to
be teaching, you probably want to look at some place other than a major
research institution. You want to look at a community college, you want to
look at small liberal arts school or something like that. But if you if
you want research to be a key part of your portfolio of talents and place
like a issue is not a bad place to go. Um, in today's economy. I think
that
issue is probably as good as school is anything to go to. We're being hit
as well as everybody else, but I think that everybody's been hit. You know
, I'm looking at the turmoil has come about because of the merger of
industrial Engineering and Computer Science. And I know that there are a
lot of faculty members or some faculty members that would like to leave,
but right now it's not a good time to leave. There's just not a lot of
openings, not the country and it's all the senior people and usually the
better people, that would be the only ones that can lead because they're
the only ones that are really marketable.
In a situation where that the budgets are such that you're not hiring
except thebest