WEBVTT 00:00:00.740 --> 00:00:05.077 Good afternoon. My name is Bill More. I'm a retired family member of 00:00:05.110 --> 00:00:11.556 industrial engineering. Today is friday, May 22nd 00:00:11.589 --> 00:00:17.006 january 22nd, 2010. 00:00:17.039 --> 00:00:23.267 I'm interviewing Dr William Lewis. Bill Lewis who is a started industrial 00:00:23.300 --> 00:00:30.357 engineering, redesigned etcetera for the A. S. U. R. A history video 00:00:30.390 --> 00:00:34.406 history project. 00:00:34.439 --> 00:00:38.646 Can you describe what? S you would like? I first got here? Well, you know 00:00:38.679 --> 00:00:45.967 , it was funny. I The issue was the campus of about 19,000 students. It 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:50.817 was a big campus. You know, I've been to Hopkins, which was 2000 00:00:50.850 --> 00:00:55.506 northwestern, which was about 8000. And then it came out here to this 00:00:55.539 --> 00:01:01.307 monster place called Arizona State University of 19,000 students, 00:01:01.340 --> 00:01:05.197 colleagues road. You can drive all the way through campus. It wasn't 00:01:05.230 --> 00:01:10.156 blocked off the east west road. You can drive through that woman with the 00:01:10.189 --> 00:01:15.656 car. No problem. The old Goodwin Stadium was still there. It was deserted 00:01:15.689 --> 00:01:19.867 or abandoned, but it was still there. It was an old W. P. A. Project that 00:01:19.900 --> 00:01:24.076 was building real concrete because it was really a mess to tear that one 00:01:24.109 --> 00:01:32.109 down. And it was a very, I'll say very interesting program. One of the 00:01:33.340 --> 00:01:37.186 first things that came to my mind when I was when I was recruiting or 00:01:37.219 --> 00:01:42.607 looking for a job, was it a s you didn't have tenure? I remember going to 00:01:42.640 --> 00:01:47.897 gil cruelly and to Lauren mittens at Northwestern and they ask you both 00:01:47.930 --> 00:01:55.107 end with what it meant to not have a tenure system and the greatest answer 00:01:55.140 --> 00:02:01.697 of all was from Lauren Minton who said, well Bill, He said, you know, if 00:02:01.730 --> 00:02:04.816 you're going to be politically active on campus tenure might be important 00:02:04.849 --> 00:02:09.386 , but they can make your life so miserable you'll want to live. And I 00:02:09.419 --> 00:02:14.467 thought, okay. And of course later it was determined that the issue is 00:02:14.500 --> 00:02:17.587 stability of employment system wasn't in fact tenure. And he started 00:02:17.620 --> 00:02:21.886 calling your ticket. But for a long time we didn't know what tenure was 00:02:21.919 --> 00:02:27.406 here. Mhm. A very interesting thing was I got a call, 00:02:27.439 --> 00:02:31.207 oh geez, I bet you it was. 00:02:31.240 --> 00:02:36.566 But it was in the 90's I get a call from the president's office and they 00:02:36.599 --> 00:02:41.906 said Lewis we know your tenure but we don't know when you've got taken, we 00:02:41.939 --> 00:02:46.686 have no record of you getting. And I says because we didn't get taken, we 00:02:46.719 --> 00:02:50.386 got stability of employment and it was no big fanfare, you didn't go up to 00:02:50.419 --> 00:02:54.837 a put together a package. It just happened if you still were there after 00:02:54.870 --> 00:02:58.906 four years or five years, you've got stability of employment. And at some 00:02:58.939 --> 00:03:03.656 point that was judged as tenure. And so I went back, I had all my old 00:03:03.689 --> 00:03:07.897 contracts and all the all the old annual contracts. And I went back 00:03:07.930 --> 00:03:12.027 through and at some point they started putting on the contract with tenure 00:03:12.060 --> 00:03:14.976 or without tenure, but prior to that they didn't even have that on the 00:03:15.009 --> 00:03:19.566 contract. And so I knew it was before that date because the first contract 00:03:19.599 --> 00:03:24.666 that had anything said with tenure. But I, I remember that it was, it was 00:03:24.699 --> 00:03:27.936 an interesting time and that was sort of, you know, one of the interesting 00:03:27.969 --> 00:03:33.406 things about the university when I first came, 00:03:33.439 --> 00:03:39.527 I came here, I would say the spring of 66 was my first semester. It was a 00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:45.106 very interesting program, small, relatively small, About 8-10 faculty 00:03:45.139 --> 00:03:49.647 members who are full time participating, very fairly large graduate 00:03:49.680 --> 00:03:53.696 program and avid program. Air Force Institute of Technology. I can 00:03:53.729 --> 00:03:56.256 remember the first day of walking in class. I was the youngest guy in 00:03:56.289 --> 00:04:00.797 class because almost all of them were affect students and all these were 00:04:00.830 --> 00:04:04.047 Air Force type people who were here to get a master's or bachelor's 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:06.406 degrees. 00:04:06.439 --> 00:04:11.906 I can remember the faculty, we used to have faculty meetings every morning. 00:04:11.939 --> 00:04:15.356 The fact that the meetings were over the union, over coffee and nobody 00:04:15.389 --> 00:04:19.947 missed the faculty. We all walked over every morning. We always kept that 00:04:19.980 --> 00:04:25.317 morning hour between 7:30 and 8:33. We all get in here at 7:30 before we 00:04:25.350 --> 00:04:30.286 get a cup of coffee and that's what we did our business. And it was very, 00:04:30.319 --> 00:04:36.207 very ill say Congenial group and very well, 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:40.356 very well run and everybody participated department as I say, it was very 00:04:40.389 --> 00:04:44.666 good. Allen principle was here. He was probably the one faculty member 00:04:44.699 --> 00:04:51.387 that did significant research charlie Hoyt was one who was sort of, my one 00:04:51.420 --> 00:04:55.467 I thought was The person I looked up to because he was sort of the father 00:04:55.500 --> 00:05:02.056 in me 12's here and he uh just the funniest guys ever seen in my life. And 00:05:02.089 --> 00:05:07.046 then oh Beeman who was a statistician who was here, they had passed away 00:05:07.079 --> 00:05:09.507 of 00:05:09.540 --> 00:05:17.540 Hodgkin's disease. I think it was john Decker who was a 00:05:17.540 --> 00:05:22.416 human factors type person. It was here Merle nut who was the traditional I. 00:05:22.449 --> 00:05:28.647 E. Type was here Dave bed worth of course was here and he was more of the 00:05:28.680 --> 00:05:34.507 production control type individual and I spent 00:05:34.540 --> 00:05:38.717 also a good mentor for me. I had a lot of a lot of enjoyable moments with 00:05:38.750 --> 00:05:42.866 Dave learning a lot about teaching and a lot about everything and all 00:05:42.899 --> 00:05:46.906 about the university. Um 00:05:46.939 --> 00:05:50.656 but they're all just very good people will see the gamble was the chair, 00:05:50.689 --> 00:05:54.236 he actually was chair for a year and a half after I got here. I think he 00:05:54.269 --> 00:06:00.096 was probably gone before you got here. CB was a very personal person. He 00:06:00.129 --> 00:06:04.476 was he was one of these people who who gave who sort of cared about you as 00:06:04.509 --> 00:06:09.116 an individual and would do whatever he could to help you out as an 00:06:09.149 --> 00:06:13.666 individual and so on. I can remember when I first got here Cbs voice name 00:06:13.699 --> 00:06:18.106 was Olives and Olive went out and helped us rent an apartment from Chicago. 00:06:18.139 --> 00:06:21.897 So we didn't have to come out here to rent one, rent a house and they had 00:06:21.930 --> 00:06:25.507 an old refrigerator that arrived. They gave us a refrigerator. So we had a 00:06:25.540 --> 00:06:30.536 refrigerator in the in the house and we moved in. Uh huh. And so you know 00:06:30.569 --> 00:06:35.507 that was just the type of person he was and he and his wife to very much a 00:06:35.540 --> 00:06:41.007 family or a people person like type of situation, very good sense of humor. 00:06:41.040 --> 00:06:49.040 Um He um probably was one of the best people people type person I've ever 00:06:51.939 --> 00:06:57.406 been. Just a very good person. What was the department like in other cases 00:06:57.439 --> 00:07:01.507 ? In other ways? 00:07:01.540 --> 00:07:05.606 Mhm. Um 00:07:05.639 --> 00:07:09.817 Well when I first came the issue was not a publisher. Perry school 00:07:09.850 --> 00:07:13.846 teaching was the most important thing you did and research if you did it, 00:07:13.879 --> 00:07:18.306 that was fine. But that wasn't a thing that you were being pushed into. 00:07:18.339 --> 00:07:23.327 And so we were all carrying three courses every semester and nobody seemed 00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:27.017 to complain about three courses semester and if you got a little grand or 00:07:27.050 --> 00:07:30.267 you got a little publications, everybody was very happy if you didn't get 00:07:30.300 --> 00:07:35.556 a grant and you've got a good teacher that was sort of the thing. And you 00:07:35.589 --> 00:07:40.116 know the politics of of the engineering college at that time were still 00:07:40.149 --> 00:07:44.906 there. There was politics, but nothing like that. It developed into later. 00:07:44.939 --> 00:07:52.106 But it was an interesting very congenial college 00:07:52.139 --> 00:08:00.139 overall. Can you describe how issue has changed since you arrived? 00:08:03.339 --> 00:08:06.707 Um 00:08:06.740 --> 00:08:11.387 I jokingly sometimes maybe joking is a little wrong. Say this is the same 00:08:11.420 --> 00:08:19.420 university I signed on for. Um, I, several times I said that is too, I 00:08:19.600 --> 00:08:24.517 really mean it. I think that there are some issues have made some 00:08:24.550 --> 00:08:30.306 tremendous progress in certain areas. I think that 00:08:30.339 --> 00:08:36.996 prior to, I'll say the mid 80s, the issue wasn't really didn't have a lot 00:08:37.029 --> 00:08:44.096 of respect in the higher education arena. I think that what happened then 00:08:44.129 --> 00:08:48.886 trying to, to move us into a research category university, trying to 00:08:48.919 --> 00:08:54.006 improve our reputation took place. I think those have all been good things 00:08:54.039 --> 00:08:58.087 and I think those are some of the good changes have taken place. I think 00:08:58.120 --> 00:09:00.307 the, 00:09:00.340 --> 00:09:07.246 the last few years have been the last few years I was here to issue while 00:09:07.279 --> 00:09:10.346 there were some things that made tremendous progress. There are other 00:09:10.379 --> 00:09:15.417 things I think that went downhill. I think that the fact that, that 00:09:15.450 --> 00:09:19.467 typically higher education, always the bottom up type activities and so it 00:09:19.500 --> 00:09:25.327 was sort of, milk makes jokes is that higher education is not a top down 00:09:25.360 --> 00:09:30.006 organization, bottom up organization, The faculty dr that's no longer the 00:09:30.039 --> 00:09:33.327 case. Of course, that's Bill Wilson's opinion. It's not necessarily 00:09:33.360 --> 00:09:37.496 everybody else's. I don't think that's really the way it is today, at 00:09:37.529 --> 00:09:45.529 least. It wasn't the last few years. I was in full time position. So I 00:09:45.980 --> 00:09:49.697 think there have been some changes not awfully good of the university. I 00:09:49.730 --> 00:09:53.276 think we've gone, we've made great strides in becoming a respected 00:09:53.309 --> 00:09:58.807 institution. We grew probably too fast 00:09:58.840 --> 00:10:03.697 Going from the school, you know, an issue in, in 66 was 19,000 students. 00:10:03.730 --> 00:10:09.986 That was a big school in 66, it really was. Ah but you know, we're going 00:10:10.019 --> 00:10:15.407 to the size we are today, it's 00:10:15.440 --> 00:10:20.087 just an awful big growth curve and it, it's got some goods and some bads. 00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:23.846 I remember those like always wanted, never wanted cap, always wanted to 00:10:23.879 --> 00:10:28.067 get more students because it was money, students created money, they give 00:10:28.100 --> 00:10:31.856 you opportunities to do things and without new students, he wouldn't have 00:10:31.889 --> 00:10:35.937 opportunities to do things, nothing's wrong with growth. But we've also 00:10:35.970 --> 00:10:40.457 changed from, we're not nearly what I would consider the congenial 00:10:40.490 --> 00:10:48.106 academic institution. We were in the 60s and seven 00:10:48.139 --> 00:10:53.407 lea, Thompson had a tremendous impact on the issue. His, 00:10:53.440 --> 00:10:58.557 his understanding of not just Arizona State University politics, but state 00:10:58.590 --> 00:11:05.697 politics was phenomenal. And he was here at the time when Arizona's 00:11:05.730 --> 00:11:10.827 Arizona State College became Arizona State University and he was sort of 00:11:10.860 --> 00:11:16.067 one of the ones that led that charge and did a lot of the groundwork in 00:11:16.100 --> 00:11:23.126 politics to get the, the school to become a university uh, fought off the 00:11:23.159 --> 00:11:27.236 u of a, trying to block it and that sort of stuff. And I think lee 00:11:27.269 --> 00:11:33.947 Thompson properly had tremendously strong impact on the university as a 00:11:33.980 --> 00:11:39.707 whole, lee, Thompson is also the founding dean of the Engineering college. 00:11:39.740 --> 00:11:43.407 Um, lee was, 00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:47.907 I guess, maybe somewhat aloof at times, it's hard to get to talk to lee, 00:11:47.940 --> 00:11:51.807 there was a joke running that never got off the first floor of the wing, 00:11:51.840 --> 00:11:54.827 never went to the second or third floor in his life. I don't know if 00:11:54.860 --> 00:11:59.907 that's true or not, but that was sort of the running joke at the time. Lee 00:11:59.940 --> 00:12:04.396 had a farm, he had raised cattle, remember applying half a side of beef 00:12:04.429 --> 00:12:10.766 from me that we, we bought some beef put in the freezer. Remember that was 00:12:10.799 --> 00:12:14.486 sort of the one of the things that we did with lee and he was just a nice 00:12:14.519 --> 00:12:19.346 guy, but let's say sort of to himself, never really worried that much. I 00:12:19.379 --> 00:12:22.236 could probably, one of the funniest things with lea Thompson, What he 00:12:22.269 --> 00:12:27.606 called a college faculty meeting one time and he made a statement. He said 00:12:27.639 --> 00:12:31.657 because facts, in fact that we're wearing shorts to school to class. He 00:12:31.690 --> 00:12:34.677 made a statement. If you want to play tennis with the kids, the students 00:12:34.710 --> 00:12:39.217 wear shorts, you want to teach them were worth loan payments. I mean that 00:12:39.250 --> 00:12:43.006 was a big deal with it. He didn't like that wearing shorts too, teach 00:12:43.039 --> 00:12:48.266 class and so on to school and so he called all the faculty together. That 00:12:48.299 --> 00:12:52.407 was what, what was about. 00:12:52.440 --> 00:12:56.807 But lee was, was very much 00:12:56.840 --> 00:13:01.986 a university person who knew the university inside out and he was able to 00:13:02.019 --> 00:13:05.337 keep the college away. You know, he was actually probably the person that 00:13:05.370 --> 00:13:10.827 actually started the college as an engineering college and got that 00:13:10.860 --> 00:13:15.407 program started he and George bickley together, put together the core 00:13:15.440 --> 00:13:23.440 program and sort of built a engineering college at almost nothing. 00:13:24.840 --> 00:13:31.567 Netflix. Yeah. I cherish every minute I learned had to to learn with 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:39.307 Milton. He was a good guy. He was a good people person 00:13:39.340 --> 00:13:44.577 and he never Now he also had a temporary times to put him out that he 00:13:44.610 --> 00:13:47.626 would get mad. I can remember he always wore these reading glasses and he 00:13:47.659 --> 00:13:51.976 would throw these reading glasses across the room when he would get really 00:13:52.009 --> 00:13:58.687 mad. And it was but but it was also one of those things where he and I had 00:13:58.720 --> 00:14:01.626 a sort of arrangement. It was, I'll ask forgiveness. I'm not gonna ask 00:14:01.659 --> 00:14:05.547 permission on everything. And that was all right with him. And I only had 00:14:05.580 --> 00:14:10.557 to ask forgiveness a couple of times. Bill Clinton, love computer. I just 00:14:10.590 --> 00:14:16.197 loved computers. It was hilarious anytime anything new came out, I would 00:14:16.230 --> 00:14:20.476 usually learn about it from Milt. You know, little little thing called the 00:14:20.509 --> 00:14:26.807 rex. Little tiny pocket thing that you could sync with outlook called rex. 00:14:26.840 --> 00:14:31.717 And one day I heard Milton was talking about the thing called rex. I've 00:14:31.750 --> 00:14:37.457 never, never he read it someplace. And so he was talking about. I think 00:14:37.490 --> 00:14:40.376 I'll go get what I thought, you know, I better get one just so we can 00:14:40.409 --> 00:14:43.896 support him all this. And so I had to go out and find one to find out what 00:14:43.929 --> 00:14:49.116 it was and get one and figure out how to support it. He let's say. He then 00:14:49.149 --> 00:14:53.246 a blackberry came along. He wanted the blackberry and linda's down there 00:14:53.279 --> 00:14:57.116 laughing. She knows all about it. What what how he was with this 00:14:57.149 --> 00:15:01.707 technology. Milk was also always the one that would, would make sure that 00:15:01.740 --> 00:15:07.106 we never over extended financially ourselves. We always had, oh, he always 00:15:07.139 --> 00:15:12.197 held back money for tough times. I can remember period of financial times 00:15:12.230 --> 00:15:15.457 when the state was in somewhat financial difficulties. Nothing like it is 00:15:15.490 --> 00:15:19.236 today when you have a was out cutting faculty and the issue didn't have to 00:15:19.269 --> 00:15:23.177 cut faculty. We were able to keep going because Milton and had not 00:15:23.210 --> 00:15:27.746 mortgaged us to the point where he couldn't do it. You have a was taking 00:15:27.779 --> 00:15:31.827 faculty who were heavy researchers and put him on three quarters time 00:15:31.860 --> 00:15:35.557 contract requiring them to fund a quarter of their salary. Well the 00:15:35.590 --> 00:15:40.006 research grants and during hard times research grants got harder to get 00:15:40.039 --> 00:15:45.197 and they were in deep trouble with their of faculty getting getting 00:15:45.230 --> 00:15:50.087 salaries, Men Milk never let that happen. He always stayed on 100%. You 00:15:50.120 --> 00:15:54.376 buy release time, but he still had money to fund the speaker. So if you're 00:15:54.409 --> 00:15:59.207 grants didn't come through, you still have money for your job. 00:15:59.240 --> 00:16:05.256 The computer commons building was built. I think when you were in that 00:16:05.289 --> 00:16:11.697 role, could you talk some about the programming of that building and how 00:16:11.730 --> 00:16:16.907 does it work now compared to the way it was programmed? Well actually the 00:16:16.940 --> 00:16:21.427 computing comments building was done under the out. I actually when I took 00:16:21.460 --> 00:16:27.287 over as interim vice provost, we actually were in a fight with the border 00:16:27.320 --> 00:16:31.726 with the legislature about money to open the building and we didn't have 00:16:31.759 --> 00:16:35.967 money to open a building and it sat for a year. And that was my first year 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:40.526 in that role with the building sitting there empty literally because we 00:16:40.559 --> 00:16:44.276 quote quote Milk said we were promised money to open the building and we 00:16:44.309 --> 00:16:48.327 didn't have money to open the building. And it turned out we never got we 00:16:48.360 --> 00:16:55.207 just opened after a year, but it was 00:16:55.240 --> 00:17:00.557 I think it serves fairly well the main floor, the computing commons area 00:17:00.590 --> 00:17:05.907 itself, I think I got a lot of good 00:17:05.940 --> 00:17:10.647 marks for the university and moving forward, providing Computing resources 00:17:10.680 --> 00:17:15.687 to the student body, make it readily available 24 hours a day, seven days 00:17:15.720 --> 00:17:20.826 a week, as much as you can eat. And I think you did a wonderful job of 00:17:20.859 --> 00:17:25.306 doing that. 00:17:25.339 --> 00:17:29.586 Milk hated the building. I just hated the building because of all the 00:17:29.619 --> 00:17:34.887 inefficient use of space. With that big atrium growing up, He says why 00:17:34.920 --> 00:17:38.316 anybody would design take all that square footage. Look at all the 00:17:38.349 --> 00:17:43.377 additional floor space we could have had, but it served, it was a very 00:17:43.410 --> 00:17:51.207 beautiful place. Uh and it still is even today, I remember the 00:17:51.240 --> 00:17:56.927 Dean of Liberal Arts Gary Kraehenbuehl, I was so mad because apparently he 00:17:56.960 --> 00:18:00.326 thought he was supposed to get the next building on campus and instead it 00:18:00.359 --> 00:18:04.857 went to the computer Congress building. And they were just so mad. They 00:18:04.890 --> 00:18:08.056 they just hated anything to do with that building because I was supposed 00:18:08.089 --> 00:18:11.607 to have been there building. 00:18:11.640 --> 00:18:15.016 I think the the Computing Compass building has served this campus very, 00:18:15.049 --> 00:18:21.766 very well. I think that it has lived up to all expectations and exceeded 00:18:21.799 --> 00:18:26.599 expectations. We've got us a lot of, I'll say, notoriety.