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.
Can you describe what? S you would like? I first got here? Well, you know
, it was funny. I The issue was the campus of about 19,000 students. It
was a big campus. You know, I've been to Hopkins, which was 2000
northwestern, which was about 8000. And then it came out here to this
monster place called Arizona State University of 19,000 students,
colleagues road. You can drive all the way through campus. It wasn't
blocked off the east west road. You can drive through that woman with the
car. No problem. The old Goodwin Stadium was still there. It was deserted
or abandoned, but it was still there. It was an old W. P. A. Project that
was building real concrete because it was really a mess to tear that one
down. And it was a very, I'll say very interesting program. One of the
first things that came to my mind when I was when I was recruiting or
looking for a job, was it a s you didn't have tenure? I remember going to
gil cruelly and to Lauren mittens at Northwestern and they ask you both
end with what it meant to not have a tenure system and the greatest answer
of all was from Lauren Minton who said, well Bill, He said, you know, if
you're going to be politically active on campus tenure might be important
, but they can make your life so miserable you'll want to live. And I
thought, okay. And of course later it was determined that the issue is
stability of employment system wasn't in fact tenure. And he started
calling your ticket. But for a long time we didn't know what tenure was
here. Mhm. A very interesting thing was I got a call,
oh geez, I bet you it was.
But it was in the 90's I get a call from the president's office and they
said Lewis we know your tenure but we don't know when you've got taken, we
have no record of you getting. And I says because we didn't get taken, we
got stability of employment and it was no big fanfare, you didn't go up to
a put together a package. It just happened if you still were there after
four years or five years, you've got stability of employment. And at some
point that was judged as tenure. And so I went back, I had all my old
contracts and all the all the old annual contracts. And I went back
through and at some point they started putting on the contract with tenure
or without tenure, but prior to that they didn't even have that on the
contract. And so I knew it was before that date because the first contract
that had anything said with tenure. But I, I remember that it was, it was
an interesting time and that was sort of, you know, one of the interesting
things about the university when I first came,
I came here, I would say the spring of 66 was my first semester. It was a
very interesting program, small, relatively small, About 8-10 faculty
members who are full time participating, very fairly large graduate
program and avid program. Air Force Institute of Technology. I can
remember the first day of walking in class. I was the youngest guy in
class because almost all of them were affect students and all these were
Air Force type people who were here to get a master's or bachelor's
degrees.
I can remember the faculty, we used to have faculty meetings every morning.
The fact that the meetings were over the union, over coffee and nobody
missed the faculty. We all walked over every morning. We always kept that
morning hour between 7:30 and 8:33. We all get in here at 7:30 before we
get a cup of coffee and that's what we did our business. And it was very,
very ill say Congenial group and very well,
very well run and everybody participated department as I say, it was very
good. Allen principle was here. He was probably the one faculty member
that did significant research charlie Hoyt was one who was sort of, my one
I thought was The person I looked up to because he was sort of the father
in me 12's here and he uh just the funniest guys ever seen in my life. And
then oh Beeman who was a statistician who was here, they had passed away
of
Hodgkin's disease. I think it was john Decker who was a
human factors type person. It was here Merle nut who was the traditional I.
E. Type was here Dave bed worth of course was here and he was more of the
production control type individual and I spent
also a good mentor for me. I had a lot of a lot of enjoyable moments with
Dave learning a lot about teaching and a lot about everything and all
about the university. Um
but they're all just very good people will see the gamble was the chair,
he actually was chair for a year and a half after I got here. I think he
was probably gone before you got here. CB was a very personal person. He
was he was one of these people who who gave who sort of cared about you as
an individual and would do whatever he could to help you out as an
individual and so on. I can remember when I first got here Cbs voice name
was Olives and Olive went out and helped us rent an apartment from Chicago.
So we didn't have to come out here to rent one, rent a house and they had
an old refrigerator that arrived. They gave us a refrigerator. So we had a
refrigerator in the in the house and we moved in. Uh huh. And so you know
that was just the type of person he was and he and his wife to very much a
family or a people person like type of situation, very good sense of humor.
Um He um probably was one of the best people people type person I've ever
been. Just a very good person. What was the department like in other cases
? In other ways?
Mhm. Um
Well when I first came the issue was not a publisher. Perry school
teaching was the most important thing you did and research if you did it,
that was fine. But that wasn't a thing that you were being pushed into.
And so we were all carrying three courses every semester and nobody seemed
to complain about three courses semester and if you got a little grand or
you got a little publications, everybody was very happy if you didn't get
a grant and you've got a good teacher that was sort of the thing. And you
know the politics of of the engineering college at that time were still
there. There was politics, but nothing like that. It developed into later.
But it was an interesting very congenial college
overall. Can you describe how issue has changed since you arrived?
Um
I jokingly sometimes maybe joking is a little wrong. Say this is the same
university I signed on for. Um, I, several times I said that is too, I
really mean it. I think that there are some issues have made some
tremendous progress in certain areas. I think that
prior to, I'll say the mid 80s, the issue wasn't really didn't have a lot
of respect in the higher education arena. I think that what happened then
trying to, to move us into a research category university, trying to
improve our reputation took place. I think those have all been good things
and I think those are some of the good changes have taken place. I think
the,
the last few years have been the last few years I was here to issue while
there were some things that made tremendous progress. There are other
things I think that went downhill. I think that the fact that, that
typically higher education, always the bottom up type activities and so it
was sort of, milk makes jokes is that higher education is not a top down
organization, bottom up organization, The faculty dr that's no longer the
case. Of course, that's Bill Wilson's opinion. It's not necessarily
everybody else's. I don't think that's really the way it is today, at
least. It wasn't the last few years. I was in full time position. So I
think there have been some changes not awfully good of the university. I
think we've gone, we've made great strides in becoming a respected
institution. We grew probably too fast
Going from the school, you know, an issue in, in 66 was 19,000 students.
That was a big school in 66, it really was. Ah but you know, we're going
to the size we are today, it's
just an awful big growth curve and it, it's got some goods and some bads.
I remember those like always wanted, never wanted cap, always wanted to
get more students because it was money, students created money, they give
you opportunities to do things and without new students, he wouldn't have
opportunities to do things, nothing's wrong with growth. But we've also
changed from, we're not nearly what I would consider the congenial
academic institution. We were in the 60s and seven
lea, Thompson had a tremendous impact on the issue. His,
his understanding of not just Arizona State University politics, but state
politics was phenomenal. And he was here at the time when Arizona's
Arizona State College became Arizona State University and he was sort of
one of the ones that led that charge and did a lot of the groundwork in
politics to get the, the school to become a university uh, fought off the
u of a, trying to block it and that sort of stuff. And I think lee
Thompson properly had tremendously strong impact on the university as a
whole, lee, Thompson is also the founding dean of the Engineering college.
Um, lee was,
I guess, maybe somewhat aloof at times, it's hard to get to talk to lee,
there was a joke running that never got off the first floor of the wing,
never went to the second or third floor in his life. I don't know if
that's true or not, but that was sort of the running joke at the time. Lee
had a farm, he had raised cattle, remember applying half a side of beef
from me that we, we bought some beef put in the freezer. Remember that was
sort of the one of the things that we did with lee and he was just a nice
guy, but let's say sort of to himself, never really worried that much. I
could probably, one of the funniest things with lea Thompson, What he
called a college faculty meeting one time and he made a statement. He said
because facts, in fact that we're wearing shorts to school to class. He
made a statement. If you want to play tennis with the kids, the students
wear shorts, you want to teach them were worth loan payments. I mean that
was a big deal with it. He didn't like that wearing shorts too, teach
class and so on to school and so he called all the faculty together. That
was what, what was about.
But lee was, was very much
a university person who knew the university inside out and he was able to
keep the college away. You know, he was actually probably the person that
actually started the college as an engineering college and got that
program started he and George bickley together, put together the core
program and sort of built a engineering college at almost nothing.
Netflix. Yeah. I cherish every minute I learned had to to learn with
Milton. He was a good guy. He was a good people person
and he never Now he also had a temporary times to put him out that he
would get mad. I can remember he always wore these reading glasses and he
would throw these reading glasses across the room when he would get really
mad. And it was but but it was also one of those things where he and I had
a sort of arrangement. It was, I'll ask forgiveness. I'm not gonna ask
permission on everything. And that was all right with him. And I only had
to ask forgiveness a couple of times. Bill Clinton, love computer. I just
loved computers. It was hilarious anytime anything new came out, I would
usually learn about it from Milt. You know, little little thing called the
rex. Little tiny pocket thing that you could sync with outlook called rex.
And one day I heard Milton was talking about the thing called rex. I've
never, never he read it someplace. And so he was talking about. I think
I'll go get what I thought, you know, I better get one just so we can
support him all this. And so I had to go out and find one to find out what
it was and get one and figure out how to support it. He let's say. He then
a blackberry came along. He wanted the blackberry and linda's down there
laughing. She knows all about it. What what how he was with this
technology. Milk was also always the one that would, would make sure that
we never over extended financially ourselves. We always had, oh, he always
held back money for tough times. I can remember period of financial times
when the state was in somewhat financial difficulties. Nothing like it is
today when you have a was out cutting faculty and the issue didn't have to
cut faculty. We were able to keep going because Milton and had not
mortgaged us to the point where he couldn't do it. You have a was taking
faculty who were heavy researchers and put him on three quarters time
contract requiring them to fund a quarter of their salary. Well the
research grants and during hard times research grants got harder to get
and they were in deep trouble with their of faculty getting getting
salaries, Men Milk never let that happen. He always stayed on 100%. You
buy release time, but he still had money to fund the speaker. So if you're
grants didn't come through, you still have money for your job.
The computer commons building was built. I think when you were in that
role, could you talk some about the programming of that building and how
does it work now compared to the way it was programmed? Well actually the
computing comments building was done under the out. I actually when I took
over as interim vice provost, we actually were in a fight with the border
with the legislature about money to open the building and we didn't have
money to open a building and it sat for a year. And that was my first year
in that role with the building sitting there empty literally because we
quote quote Milk said we were promised money to open the building and we
didn't have money to open the building. And it turned out we never got we
just opened after a year, but it was
I think it serves fairly well the main floor, the computing commons area
itself, I think I got a lot of good
marks for the university and moving forward, providing Computing resources
to the student body, make it readily available 24 hours a day, seven days
a week, as much as you can eat. And I think you did a wonderful job of
doing that.
Milk hated the building. I just hated the building because of all the
inefficient use of space. With that big atrium growing up, He says why
anybody would design take all that square footage. Look at all the
additional floor space we could have had, but it served, it was a very
beautiful place. Uh and it still is even today, I remember the
Dean of Liberal Arts Gary Kraehenbuehl, I was so mad because apparently he
thought he was supposed to get the next building on campus and instead it
went to the computer Congress building. And they were just so mad. They
they just hated anything to do with that building because I was supposed
to have been there building.
I think the the Computing Compass building has served this campus very,
very well. I think that it has lived up to all expectations and exceeded
expectations. We've got us a lot of, I'll say, notoriety.