Q: Can you share a little about your career at the University of Michigan?

A:  I started at the business school in 1987, primarily doing research support. Mostly it was on the MTS system which was the university’s mainframe at that time. Most of the data I dealt with was on big rolls of magnetic tapes and amazingly enough, if you stuffed them, held 180 megabytes. That might hold about 50 songs or 100 pictures today, think how many are on your phone! But it was a convenient way to move data around because we didn’t have the Internet. We did have some networks but they were pretty limited. So, needless to say, things have changed a lot since then.

I moved from the business school to LSA in the spring of 1997 on April Fools’ Day. My immediate project was to work on the merit salary program. Over the years, I’ve had many different titles but usually similar jobs. There was a huge reclassification, I believe in 2005, and I came out of that as a database administrator which wasn’t really what I did. Later on, the Department of Management Information Systems (MIS) was formed, which is now a part of LSA Technology Services, and I became an application architect. As one of the senior people I also try to help out with committees and things like that where I can.

Q: What is your main responsibility as an application architect?  

A: Well, you know what an app is, right? I build apps. The apps I’ve built aren’t like Spotify or what you might see on a smartphone. They are developed to fill a business need. The applications I’ve mostly worked on are for the budget system and the salary program. We meet with customers to determine the requirements for new or enhanced systems. We usually design and build a database or tables and a web page or site. We also support the systems we create. We always build with the U-M’s data resources in mind, and we try to complement those systems.

There are several application architects in Management Information Systems who have built many of the systems used around the college. These include the Classroom Database, Faculty Life Cycle, Course Catalog and Advising System, and the Management Reporting System.

Q: You mentioned the first project you worked on when coming to LSA was the Merit Salary Program. Can you tell us a little about the program and how you are involved?

A: Yes, back then it was called Merit. We’ve added a lot more pieces over the years such as equity, so it’s no longer just a merit system. There are around 2,000 employees within LSA who are eligible for an annual increase. It was my job to find a good way to administer that since a spreadsheet won’t have the management reporting we want out of it. I inherited a system that was kind of shaky and had to figure out how to load data into it and calculate limits. Our receptionist back then had to do a lot of manual entering of data that would take half an hour or so to do. I made it a lot more efficient by automating some things that need just the press of a button.

By the 2000s, it was pretty obvious that web-based solutions had a lot of advantages and the browsers were getting more standard so I built a web-based system; I rewrote the program and changed the back end to a Microsoft SQL Server. I try to make it as data driven as possible. For example, we can put in a 2% increase and it calculates what each department can spend based on the number of people in the department.

There’s a lot of complexity in the system. It takes me pretty much all of April to get it up and running and ready to go. Then, in May, the departments get the data and make entries. The faculty program comes back at the end of May and the staff program at the end of June. We use July to make sure we have everything the way we want it. Then, finally in August, we upload the data. Two minutes after I upload the data you could look on Wolverine Access to see your increase.

Q: What motivated or interested you in pursuing a career as an application architect?

A: I was an undergrad at U of M, an economics major, but I took a couple of programming classes. They were really hard and I ended up being up all night a few nights, but I felt like I really learned something new and important. Some classes you take you already sort of knew something about it, but programming I knew nothing so it was kind of neat. And, of course, the fact that I am basically lazy—I was like hey, I can get a computer to do the work for me! I also like things that are efficient.

I graduated from U of M in 1980 and it was a year with a pretty bad recession, so it was hard to find a job. The jobs I was offered didn’t even pay as much as working at the grocery store. After a year or so, I went back to school at Eastern and learned more about computers and business. It was kind of a combination of an MBA and Information Systems. Then I got a job at Burroughs in Detroit, which no longer exists. There I was, a part of the beginning of the PC revolution. Eventually one of my coworkers from Burroughs went to the U, and I remember him calling me one day saying I should join. It was the same day I was supposed to go to Pennsylvania for a meeting. I had all my bags packed and they canceled it at the last minute. He called that same day just by chance and said why don’t you come out for an interview, we’ve got a job for you. So I did, and that’s how I started my career at UofM.  

Q: What hobbies do you enjoy outside of work?

A: I definitely like photography and pets. I also like to cook and enjoy gardening, to some extent. We have three cats and will probably get a dog. We had a dog until October when she passed. I also cycle quite a bit. I mostly ride to work and take the long way home, and will often go out for a ride on the weekends. Right now my daughter’s dog is staying with us for a couple of weeks so I like taking the dog out for a walk. I enjoy keeping up with the kids—they are both in college. My daughter goes to U of M and my son goes to Eastern so we often have them over for Sunday dinner.

Q: What is on your bucket list for this summer?

A: Well, getting a puppy is pretty high on the list. I will definitely try to swim in a few lakes, Silver Lake, maybe Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Superior is usually too darn cold. Just taking advantage of Michigan’s summer because it is so short, relatively speaking. The leaves are coming out now and they will be gone at the end of October. You’ve got to seize it. The salary program keeps me pretty busy in the summer but I’ll try to take a few three-day weekends and hopefully take a week off in August when things have settled down. I don’t really think of it as a bucket list because I hope I get a few more chances.

Q: You mentioned getting a puppy is pretty high on your list.  Tell us a little more about that?

A: Yes, we would like to get a dog, not a huge dog though because next winter when the sidewalks are slippery I don’t necessarily need a big dog pulling me around. It is quite possible we will get two puppies. In the past, we’ve had two dogs and they entertain each other.  When one passed away, we fostered a puppy for a month, but it never really got along with our older dog, Blue. We really hoped Blue would train the puppy for us, but it just didn’t happen. Then, she passed away last year. An interesting thing about Blue is that she was a puppy that Moni Dressler originally had. She adopted a stray that was pregnant so she had to find homes for seven or eight puppies. We took one of those puppies.

Q: Tell us three things most people wouldn’t know about you.

A: I was an Economics major. My first class as an undergrad was in the Modern Languages Building. It was actually a relatively new building back then. I came to the United States from England when I was eleven, but I haven’t lost my accent. I live on Easy Street—it is actually a street in Ann Arbor!

Q: What else would you like us to know?

A: What a great bunch of people work here. For the most part, working with good people on interesting projects is what has kept me here over the years.