Mahon (Bio): Dr. Garland Elmore began his career at Indiana University in 1976 when he was appointed to develop courses, recruit faculty and staff, acquire facilities, and establish a major and minor academic program in what was then called Telecommunications, now known as Informatics and Computing. He then
became a leading, founding member of the School of Informatics and Computing, based on both the Indianapolis and Bloomington campuses of Indiana University.
Between 1976 and 2012, when he retired, Dr. Elmore served the University as Associate Dean of the Faculties, Executive Director of Integrated Technologies, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Dean for Information Technology, Ombudsman, Associate Vice President of Information Technology, Associate Professor of Communication, and Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing, just to name a few.
In these various roles, Dr. Elmore developed an information technology strategy in response to a new academic plan for the Indianapolis campus as Associate Dean of the Faculties from 1989 to 1991. He served as the Executive Director of Integrated Technologies through the transition and during the implementation of new services, which helped to bring IUPUI into the forefront of IT innovation in the 1990s. Additionally, he played an instrumental role in planning and
implementing “One IT at IU,” which was based on the principles of leveraging all University IT resources while strengthening end-user support across all eight IU campuses, as IU Deputy Chief Information Officer from 2006 to 2012.
In 2012, Dr. Elmore retired and became Deputy CIO Emeritus, Dean Emeritus, and Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing Emeritus. After retiring, he was awarded the President’s Medal, the University’s highest honor, from former IU President Michael A. McRobbie for his sustained excellence in service, achievement, and leadership.
Currently, Dr. Elmore is an Executive Coach and Program Facilitator for IT Leadership Development delivered by MOR Associates, which is headquartered in Watertown, Maryland. He currently resides in North Carolina.
Mahon: Today is Wednesday, July 17, 2019. My name is Leeah Mahon, Graduate Intern on this oral history project and Master’s student in Public History at Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis, IUPUI.
Today I have the privilege of interviewing Dr. Garland Elmore in a conference room in the Ruth Lilly Special Archives at IUPUI.
This interview is sponsored and funded by the Administration of IUPUI, and it is co-sponsored by the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence.
I will place a more complete biography of Dr. Elmore with the transcript of this interview. I will also record a separate brief biographical summary at a separate time, in the interest of time, like I said before.
So, before we begin the interview, I am going to ask your permission to do the same things you just agreed to in writing in case the paperwork would ever get lost.
So, I’m asking your permission to do the following: record this interview; prepare a verbatim transcript of this interview; deposit the interview and the verbatim transcript with the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives and with the Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence; and Directors of the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives and the Tobias Center may make the interview and verbatim transcript available to their patrons, which may include posting all or part the audio recording and transcription to their respective websites.
Do I have your permission to do these things?
Elmore: Yes.
Mahon: Okay. So, I’m just going to start off asking a few demographic questions to get that on the record. So, when and where were you born?
Elmore: I was born in Bluefield, West Virginia in 1946.
Mahon: And who were your parents?
Elmore: Garland and Helen Elmore. I’m a junior, so the middle name is Craft. Garland Craft Elmore, Sr., was my dad.
Mahon: Oh, okay. Okay. Did you have any brothers and sisters?
Elmore: I have four sisters, all older and all passed away except one (INAUDIBLE) sister.
Mahon: Yeah. What did your father do for a living?
Elmore: He was a contractor, as I knew him. Part of my interest in education comes from my dad. He had an eighth-grade education and worked in the mines in West Virginia at that age, eighth grade, and knew that education was kind of the ticket out of the coal fields. He believed in education. So, we moved to a little college town in Athens, West Virginia, and I grew up in Athens, so my earliest memories are in Athens, West Virginia, which is the home of what then was Concord College, now Concord University.
Mahon: Okay. So, what did your mother do?
Elmore: She ended up being a teacher. She was the first Special Education teacher in Mercer County, West Virginia. So, my four sisters all went to this college. My mom followed them, and so my four sisters, my mom, and then I went to that same institution.
Mahon: Oh, wow. That’s awesome.
Elmore: And all of us became teachers.
Mahon: Wow. All of your sisters did as well?
Elmore: All four and my mom.
Mahon: That’s incredible.
Elmore: That early influence affected our interest in education.
Mahon: As you look back on your youth, what did you learn from your parents that helped shape the adult you later became?
Elmore: I hadn’t thought about this until recently, honestly. But I have thought about it, and I mentioned my dad primarily because I realized what sacrifices he made, with an eighth-grade education working in the mines. He was paid in scrip, which is a company-issued currency, which essentially means that it’s a system that’s very difficult to break out of because he was paid in currency that had to be spent with the company. So to move out of that system was tough. He worked two or three jobs to get cash to move us out of that community into this college
community, for the reason I just mentioned, so that all of my sisters, starting with my oldest sister, who was interested in music and wanted to study music. So, he made that sacrifice to move the family and to take on extra jobs. He would travel back – it’s only about 20 miles, but it was a hard 20 miles back to the coal fields.
And so I grew up in this town of Athens and, to your point of the question, my dad probably was one of the greatest influences in my life in that time, because of the sacrifices he made. Never complained, never talked about it. I never thought much about it until actually going through some of his materials well after he had passed away and looking back and thinking about what life was like for him.
This, of course, was during the Depression era. Even food on a table was a problem, and so there were tremendous sacrifices to go to school, but we all did.
All four sisters, my mom, all went into education in one form or another.
Mahon: That’s awesome. So, other than your parents, were there any other individuals who had a significant impact on you?
Elmore: Yes, primarily my friends of that era. I’ve just been working on a project right now that reflects on this little town of Athens. The name of the website that I’m developing is called athensweknew.com, and it really focuses on the ‘60s, 1960s, a little bit on the late ‘50s, but this was the time that I grew up. If Norman
Rockwell illustrations could paint a picture of this little town, he would have captured it. And so, my friends in this town had a tremendous influence,
particularly a fellow named David, who I’ve worked with, David Baxter. His father was a college professor at Concord. He lived near me and he and I really grew up on this college campus. It was our playground. He and I collaborated. He passed away recently, but he and I collaborated on the history of this town, and so he’s probably the most influential of my friends. But it was a town where, small community and everyone knew each other, everyone’s home was kind of an extension of our own. So, all my friends’ parents were also significant in my early life and development.
Mahon: Okay. So, where’d you attend high school?
Elmore: High school, same town, Athens. I was in a college prep program. Because this is a small town and there was a college, the high school, in many respects, was an extension of college. So I had really good college preparation because of the faculty of the high school. In fact, I finished my college prep requirements in high school early, a year early, with the exception of one class. So, I did something that was unusual at that time. I decided to go to a vocational school, which
wasn’t in Athens, it was in another community about 15 miles away. So, I was bussed to this other community to take a course in radio electronics. During this era, the vocational and professional and technical schools were quite distinct from the college-bound schools. So, it was quite a different environment, quite a different culture for me. I really cared about electronics and radio. I may have been the only one in my class that cared and, as a result, I had kind of special attention from the faculty who taught that course, and learned a lot. It may have been the turning point of my academic interests because I got interested in electronics and built some radio receivers. I was doing this in my senior year while my classmates were finishing their college prep, and so that was a year long. I did it with a friend who studied drafting instead of electronics, but we traveled together and shared our experiences together. So, I had a vocational component in high school, even though I was in a college prep program. It was a good experience.
Mahon: Yeah. So, what year was that then that you graduated from high school?
Elmore: 1964.
Mahon: Okay. And when you did graduate, what did you think, or what did you hope that the future would hold for you?
Elmore: This comes back to the question about friends and what we all shared. One of the things we shared was this common interest in college. Of course, as I mentioned, my family had moved primarily to provide the opportunity for college for my sisters. So, I grew up with them attending college and then my mom. So, my friends in this town also were expected – I guess it wasn’t so much that we were expected to attend. We didn’t think about anything other than that. So, it was like an extension of high school. You finish 12 years and now you’ve got four more to go to finish your 16. And so, I started my college work in June of 1964 and I graduated in May, about three weeks earlier, from high school. So, it was just really a continuation. So, I spent four good years at Concord College. A word about Concord at that time, it’s not the same anymore, but in that era, Concord was an institution that was focused on the classics. So, I was a Liberal Arts student, but most of my readings were Greek, Roman classics. So, I had a fairly traditional old classic education at Concord, pretty rigorous. Again, I didn’t know anything other than that at the time, but I had a really good experience at Concord. Studied communication – they did not have an electronics or a physics program with an electronics component. I started studying physics and didn’t complete that because it turned out not to be aligned very well with my interests.
So, my degree that I finished was in communications.
Mahon: And you chose that because they didn’t have something similar to what you did at the vocational school?
Elmore: Correct. If I would have had a choice – I’m glad that didn’t happen, by the way, in hindsight – but if I would’ve had a choice, I would have gone into
engineering…
Mahon: Oh, okay.
Elmore: … and there was not an engineering program at this institution. I’m happy I didn’t do that, again, in hindsight, because I would have focused those pretty formative years on the technical aspects of my interest instead of the application or the applied aspects. So, I’ve been in technology all of my life, starting with that electronics course, but I haven’t become an engineer. I didn’t become an engineer. I didn’t become what I, at one time, thought would which would be a computer scientist, but I did, in fact, move through my communications study into the technology. This was back in the days of analog technology. So, I rode that wave into the digital technology. I was able to do that in communication where I began to study organizational principles, organizational communication, how individuals and organizations use technology as opposed how you actually create and develop technology. So, that was kind of the important turn in my career. That first electronics class gave me a hint and an idea of what I was interested in, and then the communication program had some, it had some kind of peripheral technical components. I took a few theater classes and found myself really involved in the technical aspects of theater. So, I was doing some set design, I was doing the lighting, I did the sound reinforcement and sound design for some of the shows, and stayed on the technical side of that. That turned out to be good experience as well. It combined kind of the creative side of the art with the more technical side. So, that influenced me as well.
Mahon: Yeah. So, as you said, you graduated from Concord then College in 1968 with a Bachelor’s in Communication.
Elmore: Yes.
Mahon: Then you continued on to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, to work towards your Master’s in Communication.
Elmore: I did.
Mahon: Why did you decide to go on to graduate school instead of entering the workforce?
Elmore: That’s a good question, too, and one that I haven’t thought much about probably for the same reason that I didn’t think about not going to Concord. Education, higher education was so much a part of my life at that time. I’ll tell you a story later about my doctoral advisor, and he and I had a conversation about this, but I’ll hold that off for the moment. But I went to Marshall immediately after
graduating from Concord. I had earlier thought that I might take a year off and work. By the way, I was working during the summers to support myself through college, so I had work experience. I worked at a movie theater and then I also traveled and worked at other labor jobs. But when I graduated in ’68, the Vietnam War was still, it was winding down, but I was still in the draft and so I had a student deferment. After graduating from Concord, I thought well, I can go start Marshall and be drafted or I could just join a service, which I did. So, I talked to a recruiter and signed on to the Army. And so I went to Marshall that first year for only a semester, and then my basic training and advanced training began in the spring. So, I had a window of time and I wasn’t really - I didn’t want to pursue a career at that point. I was waiting for things to unfold with my military options, and so I started a program. So, I only attended one semester in 1968
and then I took a year off. Then I went into basic training and advanced training for the military. Then I came back and completed my Marshall and it turned out to be an 18-month additional experience at Marshall.
Mahon: So, were you in Army Reserves then?
Elmore: Yes.
Mahon: Okay, okay.
Elmore: I spent six months in active duty and six years in active reserves, and so that worked well with my academic requirements as well. I had an experience at Marshall that also had an impact on my life. It was 1970-71 academic year and I was in my first teaching role. So, I had a teaching assistantship, which was a great experience because it was under a director of a program who was working with a lot of graduate students who were doing their first teaching. So, I got some good advice about teaching, but it was during that semester that there was a tragedy of a campus where the entire football team and their supporters fell short of the runway on a return game. That plane crashed and killed all on board. I lost three of my students during that crash. Because I still was working some in the technical areas of theater at that time, my job and part of the campus response to that was really to begin to make preparations. So, that tragedy turned into something for me that was kind of a work experience to get media involved, media information, get the auditoriums ready for these different events, but it was a difficult experience for recovery because – I don’t know if you saw the movie; it’s worth seeing. It’s called…
Mahon: I have.
Elmore: … We are Marshall…
Mahon: Yes, yep.
Elmore: … and it’s not really about football. It’s really about the community. This is an aside; you can scratch this if care to, but one of the women that I went to
graduate school with, her name was Sarah, Sarah and I were really good friends at this time and she went on to finish her studies at a different institution, her doctoral degrees. Then she came back to Marshall as the Chief Academic Officer. So, I spoke with her not too long ago about this era and she described to me working with the producers of that film, and what a delight it was to hear her story. They finished that film and then they showed it to city people and
university people, and the general response to it was this isn’t exactly right, this isn’t exactly what this person would say, this is not the way that person would react. So, to their credit, the producers delayed that film by a year and went back to the drawing boards and corrected those wrong impressions. I thought that was really an important statement because now, if I look at the film, I can identify more with it because I know that the people that are featured in that film,
although it’s a lot of fiction in it, it is realistic. It’s the way they would’ve reacted.
So, that was kind of an interesting turning point in my career, too. It taught me lots of things, including, as I looked across my classroom and saw three empty seats when we finally got back, that life is fleeting and that you don’t know what
tomorrow will be like. So, I came to appreciate students a lot more, frankly, and other people around me, and take better advantage of time is what I learned from that.
Mahon: Yeah, definitely.
Elmore: So, that was Marshall – you asked about the experience there. I graduated from Marshall right after that, in ’71.
Mahon: So, you did talk a bit about your teaching experience there with your
assistantship. Did you know after that assistantship that you wanted to be a teacher then for sure, or were you still…?
Elmore: No, I didn’t. In fact, that’s really the first time that I started - I didn’t know that I would go on for a doctoral degree. At that point, I had in my own mind completed my education and so I began to think about career. I looked at lot of different opportunities. As I was just starting that process, the Dean of the School of Communication at Marshall approached me and asked if I might be interested in a teaching position as an introductory position at a community college in West Virginia. As it turned out, what was going on politically in West Virginia at that time is that Marshall University and West Virginia University both had branch campuses or regional campuses in different parts of the state, and there was an effort underway to break those institutions, those campuses, away from their host institutions and to create a community college system across the state. So, that was happening at this time and so when my Dean approached me, he was aware that in the following year, that campus, which was part of Marshall University in Logan, West Virginia, and had a campus in Williamson, West Virginia, another one in Parkersburg, I think – he was aware that those
campuses would no longer be part of Marshall and that the Marshall Director of those campuses was in a position to begin to hire their own faculty instead of using Marshall faculty. So, the short part of that story is that I said yes, I would be interested in that. I went to Logan, West Virginia, for an interview. Two weeks later, I had an appointment letter and so I started my teaching career full- time at this community college. I also took on a role as the Director of what then was called something like Learning Resources. So, it tied back to my interest in teaching technology, learning technology. So, I was able to develop the media services for this new community college that had a campus in Logan and in Williamson, two campuses. So, that was my first real faculty position and my first real administrative position.
Mahon: And you stayed in that position until 1974.
Elmore: I did and it was ’74 that I met Jean. That’s my wife. She was a graduate from University of Michigan. She was there teaching nursing on the Williamson campus. She and I had met and married that year. After we married, we moved to Athens, Ohio, where I began my doctoral residency. I had been admitted to Ohio University earlier and attended a summer class or two in the year while I was at Southern West Virginia Community College.
Mahon: Okay. So, you started your PhD in 1974?
Elmore: Yes. I may have started in ’72 or ’73.
Mahon: Just because you took a few classes.
Elmore: I started with a class. In fact, it would have been that because I remember that Ohio University had a seven-year requirement. From the time you began your program, you have to finish it in seven years. I finished my doctoral studies in 1979, in May, and I remember I was cutting it close because I had started seven years earlier than that in June. So, seven, that would have been ’72 that I would have actually taken my first class at Ohio.
Mahon: So, what made you decide to get your PhD?
Elmore: It was the teaching experience at Southern, and two things probably motivated it.
One was I did enjoy higher education and I did enjoy teaching. Now I’ll tell you the story that I put off for a little bit about my advisor, my advisor at Ohio
University. I had a discussion with him – his name was Ray – I had a discussion with Ray about my life and about my career. I remember that discussion well because it was the first time I really came to terms with: do I want to commit my life to higher education? So, the conversation went something like this. “Say, Ray, I’ve been thinking about teaching and I’ve been – I have a little experience in teaching, but most of my experience has been as a student, and I really like being a student. I like learning, I like new things, I like the campus environment and I think I’d like to commit to that long-term.” His response to that was, “I think that’s exactly right for you; and for you, it would be a great way to prolong
adolescence.” That’s a direct quote. So, I was a little beyond adolescence – I was 20-something, 28 at that time – but I think he saw something that I had not thought about, and that is there is something about student life on campus that’s different than any other part of culture in life. So, maybe it’s prolonging
adolescence, maybe it’s just because you want to continue to learn all of your life, but Ray’s statement pretty much captured me at that point in life. I wanted to prolong that; I did not want to stop being a student. I know they’re to many negatives in there, but I wanted to continue to learn, continue working in
education. And, of course, as a faculty member, there was some opportunity to not only learn about what you’re teaching, but do research and service and so on, which I enjoyed. So, that’s essentially when things began to firm up in my thinking about what I wanted to do and where I wanted to spend my life.
Mahon: Okay. So, you did end up teaching again at OU just as a teaching assistant.
Elmore: Teaching assistant.
Mahon: Then in 1976, while you were still working on your PhD, you accepted a position as an associate faculty member at Indiana University/Purdue University
Indianapolis…
Elmore: I did.
Mahon: … where you would stay for nearly four decades.
Elmore: Exactly.
Mahon: So, what made you accept this position and move to Indiana, especially when you were still working on your PhD?
Elmore: Yeah, good question, and I’ll think back on that time. So I had finished my coursework and residency requirements at Ohio University. I still had the teaching position; I was on leave from Southern. My wife, Jean, was also on leave because she was on the nursing faculty at Southern, but she was with me in Athens. So, after I finished my residency, I had some choices, some options.
One, both of us could go back to teach, which we did for one year, or we could go pursue the next step of our life and career. For her, she needed to complete an advanced degree. She was interested in gerontology. She was a practicing RN and was teaching nursing, but she wanted to look at becoming a nurse practitioner in home health. She was interested in establishing a home health agency. So, we were in kind of a turning point in our lives where we could do whatever we wanted, frankly. We didn’t have children, we were newly married, I had finished my residency. She was interested in pursuing an advanced degree.
We pursued that a little bit. She looked at West Virginia University, she looked at Duke and Indiana University, and Indiana University here at IUPUI. The School of Nursing, at that time, I think was the largest or one of the largest in the
country. It was also one of the best academically, and it had everything that she was looking for in terms of opportunity to teach some in the Associate Degree Program, pursue her studies in nursing in gerontology and pursue the nurse practitioner study, and I was frankly free. I had a dissertation to write and I was planning to spend a year or so writing that dissertation. I just needed libraries and media. So, it didn’t matter where I was. So, we moved to Indiana so that she could go to school. So, that first year she started working and going to school at IU. We bought a little house up in Zionsville and I was writing. And at the time I was writing my dissertation, I became acquainted with IUPUI. My academic interests at that time, as I kind of alluded to before, really were not traditional. My interests were more in how organizations use technology and media. There’s a component of telecommunications or broadcasting in that.
There’s a component of media services and so on in that. There’s a component of learning theory in it, and it’s kind of a mixture of interests. As it turned out, IUPUI, in the Department of Communication, which is where I was offered an adjunct position just to teach a course, started to ask me about that interest and that they were, the Department Chair – his name was Bob – Bob asked if I might be interested in a long-term appointment to specifically develop a program along those interest lines. Today we would call that Informatics, by the way. That name didn’t exist back then. But what I was interested in is now New Media and Informatics. Didn’t know those names at that time. So, I applied for a position as an Assistant Professor and Director of what then was called Telecommunications – that’s a misname. The program at Bloomington, at that time, was called Telecommunications, but it was a broadcast-based telecommunications program.
So, we didn’t really know any better; we called it telecommunications, but it did not have a broadcast orientation. It would really complement the program in Bloomington and create a program that took advantage of our environment here in Indianapolis – hospitals, downtown businesses and so on. So, this program, academic program would really focus on those kinds of organizations. I applied for that position. There was a search committee and I remember that fairly well.
There was a fellow on the search committee that asked me a question that threw me for a loop. His name was Tony – he was in Religious Studies, Tony Sherrill;
he’s passed away now – and at the end of the interviews, I think it may have been the last interview question, Tony said, “So you’ve been on the adjunct faculty for a year, you’re getting to know faculty in the School of Liberal Arts and other places, other schools at IUPUI. And so I have kind of a final question for you.” He said, “Does this seem to you like the kind of place that has people that you’d like to grow old with?” You know, I thought a lot about that because that’s an insightful question that Tony asked, and it’s something I had not thought about. I was here for a year or two, I was following my wife to the School of Nursing, I was finishing my dissertation, not finished yet, and the question about whether I wanted to grow old here was one that I couldn’t answer honestly. I said, “I just, that’s a good question, I don’t know. I like the campus, I like the people.” It was a very exciting time of what was going on in Indianapolis and the campus, but that question was a difficult one to answer. I can answer that today, by the way. The answer to that question is yes, totally, it does. And so that’s why that good question is really why we stayed. It wasn’t planned at that time.
Mahon: Okay. Well, at this time, like I mentioned to you before we started recording, I am going to talk a little bit about leadership specifically before we move on to your long career at IUPUI and IU. So, I will just ask you a few pointed questions about leadership now. As I mentioned in the pre-interview, the interview is sponsored by the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence. One of the reasons you were chosen for an interview was because of your immense leadership record at IUPUI. Just to give a recap, which will make more sense later on in the interview when we talk about your positions, you served IU as Deputy Chief Information Officer from 2006 to 2012, Dean for Information Technology from 1997 to 2012, Ombudsman for the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology from 2006 to 2012, and you were Associate
Professor of Communication and Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing, just to name a few of your positions.
Like I said, it will be clear once we go more in depth with your career that you exhibited exemplary leadership in the various administrative positions that you held for Indiana University.
You have also been called a leader by former IU President, Michael McRobbie, and have been regarded as an IT pioneer. So, my first question for you then is do you see yourself as a leader?
Elmore: I do in hindsight. What came I think naturally to me were leadership traits that ultimately go back to what we first talked about, you know, things I picked up in early life, childhood even. A lot of those leadership traits I, in hindsight, had undervalued. I went through a program in leadership late in my career. It was three years before I was to retire and I was on glide path toward retirement, and we engaged a program called MOR Associates – Maximizing Organizational Resources. It’s in Watertown, Massachusetts, owned by a fellow named Brian McDonald. I met Brian three years before I retired and I went through this program, and I went through this program reluctantly. I did it because my supervisor, who I had hired earlier, Brad Wheeler, asked me to go through it, primarily to model it for other senior-level staff. I think he saw areas of strength in me and areas of weakness that I was not aware of. So, he asked me to go through that program and I think he wasn’t entirely straightforward about why and
I’m thankful for that. So, I went through this program and the thing that I learned about leadership at that time that had a major impact on me is there are a whole host of traits, and a lot of them are individual traits or personal traits, that if you’ve never been trained in leadership, you don’t know how important they are. Just as an example, relationships – building relationships, having a network of
relationships, nurturing relationships, building organizational relationships. I was always good at building relationships, but because I was pretty good at it, I diminished its importance. I thought, oh well, this is easy; nobody (SIC) can do this. So, I remember in my early days of administration, somebody would come by the office and would say, “Would you care to go for a cup of coffee?” and I was busy; I had work to do. So, I’d say no. “Do you care to go to lunch?” “Well, no; I’ve got work to do; I skip lunch.” I was on the 5th floor of the ITC Building, at one point, I remember looking down on the mall on this campus of IUPUI and looking at students and thinking it’s been 20 years since I’ve taught, I wonder what it’s like being a student these days? And I was responsible for providing the technology for these students. So, what I’m headed to here is there are traits that we take for granted and often we diminish; and for me, one of them was I really need to acknowledge the importance of building relationships. When I came to terms with that, I set a goal for myself. One of them was to spend two one-half hour blocks every week with a student that I did not know. So, I would get out of my office, I would go somewhere on this campus or some other campus, and see a student sitting or reading or listening to music and I would say, “Could I talk with you a little bit?” And to kind of my surprise, it was awkward at first, I never got anyone to say no, and I had some pretty substantive
discussions as a half-hour or an hour about what it was like being a student.
Well, you can take that and look at it more broadly. If you think about leadership as influence, relationships are key to influence. Then there are other traits that we could go through, but the ones that I was good at, I had diminished. And the ones I was not very good at, I had worked on without much success, and I learned this during this MOR Program. Back to your question about definition of leadership, I can’t quote them, but I studied lots of different definitions of
leadership. And the one that I completely threw away ten years ago, I’ve now embraced, and it compared – I forgot who did it; I’ll think of it in a minute, who said this – but it was the difference between management and leadership. You’ll remember this, the famous quote was managers do it right; leaders do the right thing. You know, that’s so simple, but it’s too simple. You need substance and so I didn’t accept that, but now I have. I think leadership is really about doing the right thing and, of course, there are all kinds of components to that. There are ethical components, there are strategic components about what is the right thing, and there are all kinds of other components. I’ve kind of used that recently as kind of my - it’s what I look toward in deciding what leadership is and what I want to do, what’s the right thing to do. Simple, but it forces you to ask the right questions about influence and what kind of influence you want to have in leadership.
Mahon: Okay. Well, I think you’ve answered just about all of my questions that I had on leadership. One of them was: How has your leadership style changed over the years as you moved through your various positions at IUPUI? So, I mean, I guess you kind of answered that, but could you kind of expand on that a little bit?
You talked more about the latter half of your career, how it changed; what about, you know, the earlier years?
Elmore: Yeah, I guess if there’s one thing that I look back on that’s changed, it’s moving from – this is probably not the best way to describe it – but performance-based leadership to genuine interpersonal behavior. So, I think there was a time in my career where I had a definition, although I may not be able to articulate it, verbalize it. I knew what a leader was. You know, we all have models of leadership and so we try to emulate them and be like them, and often that’s disaster because you’re not like those other people. This sounds really silly, but I remember thinking about Popeye, “I yam who I yam,” and that just occurred to me one day, this was years ago, but I started to look that up and see if there’s a philosophy behind that in a cartoon or if that was just a throwaway. Well, there’s philosophy behind I yam who I yam, and it really is: be yourself and you don’t have to hide imperfections. You can’t hide imperfections. You are who you are, and I didn’t understand that until much later. I had an image of leadership, image of leaders that I wanted to be like, that I wanted to emulate, and I tried. I think the MOR Program, that I mentioned, was the turning point for that. One quick story about that. My coach, Brian McDonald, we go through a process, a 360- Degree Survey, where you have colleagues and subordinates and peers do an honest appraisal. So they put this appraisal data together for you, and so you go over that with your coach. I remember looking at this list of traits, leadership traits, starting with the ones that I presumably was really good at, and down at the bottom were ones I was really no good at, at all. So, I started to look at that and prepare for my meeting with my coach, and I thought this is going to be bad;
this is going to be awkward because there’s nothing new in here for me. I know these traits down here. I thought about them for years; I’m no good at this, I’m never going to be good at this, I’ve worked on this for 40 years. These things up here, okay, I’m good at that, but so what? Well, so I was preparing my little speech for Brian about the response to this. He also threw a loop for me
because as we went through the top of the list that said you’re pretty good at this, you’re pretty good at this, you pretty good at this. And just about to the point he got midpoint, he drew a line across the list and said, “Are you aware that you’re not very good at these things down here, these leadership traits?” And I said,
“Yes, Brian, I’m aware of that.” I was about to get angry. And he said, “Well, let’s not worry about those; let’s just throw those out. You’ve worked on them;
we’re not going to waste our time, your time, my time trying to develop traits that you’re not ever going to develop, you’re not very good at. Let’s focus on what you’re really good at.” That to me was the turning point. And that’s also when I came to realize I am who I am, and so I developed my skills that I’m good at, I know I’ve got flaws, I’ve got these traits that I’m no good at, I’m aware of them, but I’m not going to try - I can’t spend all my energy trying to deal with those. I need to build on my strengths.
Mahon: Okay. Well, now we’ll switch back to talking about your career. So, the remainder of the interview, the majority of it at least, will be about your time at IUPUI. So, as we talked about, you did move to Indianapolis – well Zionsville, I suppose, is where you moved to – in 1976, and you started as a faculty member in Communications at IUPUI. Could you just tell me what the campus was like when you started?
Elmore: Yeah. I don’t remember who referred to the campus as kind of being upside down in the sense of having its graduate and professional programs full
developed, well developed, but the undergraduate programs were still kind of in
their infancy. When I arrived on the scene, of course, this building wasn’t here.
The three core buildings of the undergraduate campus, as it was called at that time, were Cavanaugh Hall, the old Library building, which I guess is still – is University College still there? I don’t know what’s in the old Library building…
Mahon: I’m not sure.
Elmore: … and then the Education/Social Work building. So, that was kind of it. A lecture hall was built, a lecture hall building was then. So, this was just a little hub of a campus. It was a large city and a large institution, but the
undergraduate component was relatively small. I think Tony’s question about what it’s like here was kind of insightful in the sense that he, it was collegial with a lot of people closely bound together toward common interests. It was an exciting place, as I mentioned early, for both the city and for the campus because it was growing. It was a new campus. The professional school’s been here a long time, but as a campus, as an institution, it was kind of brand new. So, I kind of rode that up and it was a very exciting time.
Mahon: Okay. So, I have to just switch that around a little bit because I did not read the biography, but when I do read the brief biography that I will place separately, you were recruited in 1976 to help develop courses, recruit faculty, staff, acquire facilities and establish a minor and major program in what was then called Telecommunications…
Elmore: Exactly.
Mahon: … so, what would now be known as the School of Informatics at IU.
Elmore: Right. It was a component of what now … Mahon: Right.
Elmore: … I’ll jump forward and come back here, but the School of Informatics, which now includes computing in Bloomington and engineering component in
Bloomington, really developed multiple places; in Bloomington, at IUPUI, and a component at IUPUI is the remnant of the programs I developed in the School of Liberal Arts, which was kind of the new media piece of it.
Mahon: So, you clearly had a lot on your plate when you started at IUPUI. That’s a lot to be asked to do. So, with that being said, I’m curious, I guess, why did you think that IUPUI needed an Informatics and Computing major and minor or
Telecommunications, as it was known?
Elmore: It was an interesting time, not only in the development of the campus and the city, but in the area of technology. It’s all hindsight now, but what I grew up in, in terms of the technology, was all analog technology. So, I learned my skills, especially the technical skills on analog technology, whether it was video, audio, photography, all of it, which was quickly becoming or would quickly become obsolete. This whole integration is called convergence, where the telephone, video, photography, they were all separate and distinct fields, all analog, and they were coming together at this time. So, those of us who studied that field
knew this was coming. Some of us predicted it; I predicted it. I missed it by about 20 years when it would actually occur. I thought it would, I was way ahead of the game in terms of expectations. So, when I was here in the ‘70s, I was expecting that we were on the verge of convergence and so these technologies, that now we take for granted including all the ones around us here, were going to converge and they were going to provide tremendous opportunity for what I was interested in, and that’s teaching and learning and organizational use of the power of technology. So, that’s what IUPUI provided for me in terms of almost an open book. This is kind of good news and bad news. The bad news is that there wasn’t anybody tracking this at IUPUI, I mean, at least that I knew of. My Communication colleagues were pretty traditional. They were involved in rhetoric and they were involved in theater and debate. They may have an interest in video, but it was the old video and they have - So, there was no interest in it because it was too early, but my academic interest was in this area. So, IUPUI provided an opportunity for me to go from a theoretical and what I’d studied to really begin to develop a far-reaching, a forward-looking curriculum that would prepare students for this changing world, and so that’s what I set out to do. That was very exciting, and it’s undoubtedly why I stayed because every semester was more excitement, more developing a course. I taught all those courses myself for the very first time, hired faculty members over time, but my first
graduating class had eight students in it. I still meet with those students. I had a little reunion at our house a few months ago. They graduated in ’81. They took every one of their major classes from me. I felt so sorry for them, in hindsight, because that’s all there was. They may have taken a class or two from an adjunct, somebody that was in the city who came in and taught for us. But the only full-time faculty member during the development of that curriculum was me.
It was a great opportunity for me to learn with students. A lot of professionals in the field took classes from downtown, taught me the very first year to change my teaching style as more of a partnership with adult learners. So, from that point on, I just had an exciting semester after semester after semester as the program grew. It grew during the next year or two to the largest, first the largest in the Communication area. It was a track within Communication. And then, at one point, we had more majors in that field than we had in the School of Liberal Arts.
That was back in the ‘80s, by the mid- ‘80s. In fact, it had grown too large for the facilities that we had and so on. But that’s really what kind of motivated me to stay on. It was just exciting work. Do you remember my comment about prolonging adolescence?
Mahon: Yes.
Elmore: Well, this was a chance for me to continue my education.
Mahon: Okay.
Elmore: I developed courses and that was just like I had done in school. I developed a curriculum as part of my doctoral studies. So, this was an extension of my education and could benefit others, of course. So, it was a good ride.
Mahon: Yeah. So, as you were doing this, you very quickly moved through the ranks at IUPUI. You became Resident Lecturer of Communications, as well as Director of Telecommunications in 1977. You remained Director until 1989 and during that
time became Assistant and then Associate Professor of Communications in 1979 and 1983. You also became Associate Professor of Informatics and Computing in 2003. So, could you just tell me a little bit about your responsibilities as Director of Telecommunications?
Elmore: The academic program?
Mahon: Yes. That was developing the academic programs.
Elmore: Yeah.
Mahon: Okay. Got it, got it.
Elmore: That was in the School of Liberal Arts and it was in the Department of Communication and so, as the Director, I was the Director, I was hired as Director, but there was no facility, there was no faculty, there was no course.
Mahon: You had to build all that.
Elmore: So, that was building. I mentioned Tony Sherrill in the interview question. My next meeting was with Joe Taylor. He was the Dean of Liberal Arts at that time, and I remember that very well too. It kind of foreshadows what was in front of me for the next few years. Joe and I had a wonderful meeting. He described the school, where IUPUI was, the excitement of the place. So, I asked him if he had some questions for me and he said, “No, I don’t second-guess your qualifications or fit for the job, went through the search, the search committee has
recommended you, the Department has accepted you. My role is primarily to tell you that you don’t have any resources.” I said, “Well, you know, as the Director of Telecommunications, we’re going to be developing a curriculum that’s
dependent on technology and so we’ll need to have equipment and we’ll need facilities.” His response was, “My job is primarily to tell you we don’t have any of that.” So, I suppose I could’ve walked away from that and said no, and I think some people would. I didn’t say no for a couple of reasons. One, I wasn’t in a position to say no. Jean was still working on her studies and I was still finishing my dissertation. But also, this was part of the challenge. So, that meant, in addition to finding the right faculty, I needed to find the salary for those faculty and I needed to do other things that would be able to make this program fly. So, that was part of the challenge and that was part of my excitement. So, I
developed courses – this was kind of preceding Responsibility Center of Management – so, there were opportunities to find money here and there for good causes. So, I was able to get a room or two and was able to find some surplus equipment, literally surplus from the State of Indiana, that we used. I had a lot of good people around me that donated things. So, the first program was really built mostly on surplus and goodwill. But over time, resources were provided and we were able to build a faculty of three full-time and a couple of staff members full-time, developed a facility in Cavanaugh Hall, acquired some space in what then was Mary Cable Building, and supported about 35 majors and over a hundred interested students who took courses every year. So, we did alright.
Mahon: Okay. So, you were developing the major and minor and also teaching at the same time…
Elmore: Yes.
Mahon: … as you said. Then in 1989, you became Director of the Office of Learning Technologies, as well as Associate Dean of the Faculties. You remained in both of these positions until 1991. Per the biography that you provided me, as
Associate Dean of the Faculties, you, and I’m quoting, “developed an information technology strategy in response to a new academic plan for the Indianapolis campus which led to the reorganization of the central computing, media, networking and telephone service organizations.” So, because I am not an IT person, a lot of the people that might listen to this may not be IT people, can you just explain to me a little bit more about the implications of this information technology strategy?
Elmore: Yeah. It’s a good way to put it; good question. Let me go back again to my academic interests, which again, just in summary, are focused on the way organizations use technology for whatever purpose. They use technology for communication, for public relations, for outreach; they use technology to achieve their goals and advance their mission. So, that’s what I studied and that’s what the program in academic Telecommunications and Informatics, New Media was really all about. So, there we are. Now the context is mid- ‘80s. That’s when the program, the New Media program that I developed was in full swing, in 1985. In
’85 we were proposing that it become a major of its own. Well, something happened in ’85 and ’86 and that is, this campus, IUPUI, began to think about its maturity. We were looking forward to the 20th anniversary of the creation of this campus. So, in anticipation of the 20th anniversary, the Chancellor, Gerald Bepko, and his Associate Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of Faculties, Bill Plater, began to develop what was the first IUPUI academic plan. It was called IUPUI 1988 to 2000. It was that two-year interval leading up to, or that 12-year interval leading up to the year 2000, and so it was the 12 years forward from when we became of age, we became 20 (INAUDIBLE) the campus. So, that took two years. I think it was released in ’88, which is why the title was ’88 to 2000. Well, I read it. I would participate in it a little bit as a faculty member, but I read this – I still have my copy of it, by the way – and what I did, as kind of an academic, is that I read it word-for-word and then I said, “There’re a lot of implications for technology in this plan.” I read it the second time and, in my student technique, I took a highlight marker and any time I saw anything that looked like technology, I underlined it, or highlighted it. Then I went through it a third time and I read only the highlights. I honestly did this. I read it aloud to see what it said. I was kind of young and not entirely proper, and I kind of almost laughed at it because it had implications for technology that I knew – I may have been the only person who knew – that this was not going to happen. This was not realistic, that the things that were in that plan were not likely to happen. This is what I concluded. So, I made a few jokes about it. And what happens if you are a faculty member and you start to get in trouble is that somebody will appoint you to chair a committee. So, I was appointed to chair a committee to develop a response to that academic plan. So, essentially, and these are my own words, nobody ever told me this, but I essentially said, “Okay, if this is not likely to happen, tell us what we should say.” And so, I chaired that little committee and
made a report that essentially said we don’t have the technology on this campus to advance this academic agenda. And so, I filed that report and I thought that was over. Now I’m to your question, finally, of how I made that transition into administration. So, I filed that report in the fall of 1988. I went around and took care of my business, went back to my office and did my job. On December 23rd of 1988, I got a call from Gerry Bepko, the Chancellor. I didn’t often get calls, in fact, I had never gotten a call from the Chancellor. He asked if I might come by and talk. Well, I did and it was over in the old AO Building. In the course of that conversation with Gerry Bepko, he said, “We got your report, we read it, we think there’s some substance here, would you be interested in the next step – and this is also a direct quote – which is ‘to provide academic leadership for the use of technology in advancing this academic plan’”? And I said, “I don’t know.” And he said, “Well, let me know when we get back from the holidays.” So, I walked out of that meeting on December 23rd knowing we’re coming back on January 2nd, and kind of wondering to myself why did I not ask him what that means? I don’t know what it means to provide academic leadership for the use of technology in teaching, learning and research. So, I thought about it all through the holidays and I was angry at myself for not pursuing it more because I didn’t know. So, anyway, I got back after the holiday and I went to see Gerry and he says, kind of,
“What do you think?” And I said, “Well, I have a question.” I said, “What do you mean when you say provide leadership for the use of technology?” His response was, “I don’t know. You’ll have to decide that.” Well, actually, that’s what I wanted to hear because, again, it was like developing the academic program;
essentially, I’d have a clean slate. Don’t know, the Chancellor didn’t know, we just knew that it needed to happen. So, I accepted a six-month appointment as an Associate Dean of the Faculty reporting to Bill Plater to begin to develop this strategy. So, what was happening at that time was we had a new telephone system installed on campus. That was a plus. We had a Library program statement for this building that we’re sitting in. It was just an idea; it was a thought. That was a real plus, but we had a lot of problems in technology that we needed to solve. So, during that six-month period, what I started to do, and this is where the strategy comes in, is to start working with colleagues. It’s not just me, but with a lot of colleagues, and say well, how can we offset the weaknesses and build on our strengths, including this Library? Are you housed in this
Library? Is your office here?
Mahon: It is not. I actually, I’m in Cavanaugh Hall most of the time.
Elmore: If you go through this Library, it is very rich in technology. If you think about when it was built, ’91, unbelievably rich in technology. So, this Library really became kind of the symbol and the opportunity on which to develop a technology plan that ultimately could be spread across campus. So, this is kind of what we were doing in those first six, eight months, is we were thinking about the Library, how the Library plan could be changed, modified to begin to deploy technology in new and exciting ways, the way we could begin to develop the campus network.
We didn’t have a campus network at that time; there were no networks. No networks, hard to believe. Classrooms were pretty poorly equipped with technology. We had a Lecture Hall, but the other classrooms, 148 classrooms on the campus, hardly any of them had technology. None of them were wired to the internet. It was a pretty dire situation, but during that six months, we began to develop a strategy to deploy technology in little ways and then extend it across
campus as resources would provide. The resources came later as part of this strategy. And convergence, that I mentioned earlier, was now right upon us. So, the telephone company came out of Indiana Bell essentially, the people did, but we had our own telephone system on this campus. We had academic computing with mainframes on this campus, and there was also a mainframe over in the Medical Center and one in Dentistry. We had Learning Resources Media, those kinds of things, and we had a Library. So, there are four organizations that became partners in developing this plan. Over the planning cycle, we concluded let’s partner with the Library, use the Library as a place to deploy technology and then merge these other three organizations into one. Each of them had various pieces of responsibility in a converged environment. So, that’s what essentially, we had to do, and that organization became known as Integrated Technologies – integrated because it was really telecommunications, computing services and media services. So, one organization – I became the Executive Director of that.
And so, that was an administrative role, kind of a management role, leadership management role - the Associate Dean of the Faculty role at the same time – the Associate Dean of the Faculty was really for the planning piece. It was kind of a high-level academic process, whereas Executive Director was the day-to-day business of deploying the plan, developing and deploying the plan.
Mahon: So, in 1991, you became the Executive Director of Integrated Technologies…
Elmore: Yes.
Mahon: … and that was where you actually put in - you were working on what you had just created.
Elmore: Exactly.
Mahon: Okay.
Elmore: So, that became the mechanism to develop the plan, or to implement the plan is what I should be saying.
Mahon: Okay. So, you remained in that position until 1993. In the biography that you’ve provided to me, it stated that you served through the transition and during the implementation of new services that helped bring IUPUI into the forefront of IT innovation. So, can you tell me what technological transition IUPUI was going through at this time?
Elmore: Yeah. It was major. So, to think back about your question about when I left the Executive Director role, the Executive Director role was an organizational leadership role, and we recruited another person to do that. So, that
responsibility was given over to Georgia, another person, and she led Integrated Technologies for the next few years. So, what happened with my role as
Associate Dean of the Faculty was actually the overseeing of the implementation of the plan, plus our first extension really with cooperating with Bloomington and developing a University-wide strategy and extending our hand to colleagues on the Bloomington campus. But by mid-‘90s, what we were doing is going through every component of the plan and implementing it. One was just networking. I mean, we had three integrated technologies, we had three mainframe computers
connected by wire. We didn’t have any peer-to-peer network. All these network cables that you see in this building and all over the campus, none of it existed.
None of the buildings were connected to each other. So, this is more to tell than you care to know, I’m sure, but there are tunnels all under this campus and so we spent our time in these tunnels pulling cable to tie all the academic buildings together. So, one of our objectives was to provide ethernet to every academic facility on the campus. That was no small undertaking. Now we just take it for granted and it’s not only in the walls, it’s wireless. So, wireless didn’t exist at that time. So, we were really the very basics. We were trying to then deliver media.
Now, this is probably hard for you to comprehend, knowing what you do with a browser on a computer – browser did not exist. At that time, we were trying to deliver photographs, images, video to a desktop computer in a classroom or a faculty office from this building, from the Library building, by our own developed technology. That changed one day when we saw the first browser being
introduced and said this is what the future holds. So, the browser on your laptop that can access the world and every bit of information and data that’s available online anywhere, none of that existed. Almost at the turn of a switch, we moved from the strategy that we were developing to one that’s focused on convergence.
That’s real convergence. So, we were prepared. We were probably prepared as a campus better than any other campus, any other campus that I know, we were prepared for convergence. When that browser developed…
Mahon: You were ready.
Elmore: … we were ready for it, this building was ready for it, we quickly turned and began to change the strategy toward what really you see now, which includes not only the wire, but the wireless components, the full multimedia on every desktop, printing distributed all over, even security, (INAUDIBLE) got the ID cards. All that became woven into this over the plan. But in the mid- ‘90s, to your question, that’s when this all happened. That was the turning point. So, my role was to help guide that. I was not then worrying about the day-to-day operations of Integrated Technologies. That was being managed elsewhere.
Mahon: So, while you were still Executive Director in 1992, you also became Associate Vice Chancellor of IUPUI where you would remain until 1997. So, did any of your responsibilities as Associate Vice Chancellor overlap with what you were doing with technology or was that a separate…?
Elmore: No, they really did overlap. In fact, they were almost one and the same. I think the difference that you would make would be that instead of the day-to-day management, back to my definitions, management is doing things right – the day-to-day management was no longer my responsibility after I moved out of Integrated Technologies. So, that part was somebody else’s responsibility, reported to me, but I didn’t do it on a day-to-day basis. As Associate Dean of Faculty and Associate Vice Chancellor, those were leadership positions that helped create the plan for moving forward. And that, at first, was just the implementation at our local IUPUI campus plan, but later in that decade, in the
‘90s, leading up to ’97, part of the plan is we’re not an island and we can’t operate our technology independently of IU’s technology. Again, this is more complicated and more detailed than I care to get in to, but every campus was doing its own thing. They weren’t compatible systems. We had campuses in IU,
the seven or eight campuses, that had systems that could not speak to other campuses. So, part of my role back in the mid- ‘90s, was begin to just become aware of the University implications of what convergence means. And so, by maybe ’96, I was working with colleagues in Bloomington. This is probably a major step – there’s been a tension, everybody kind of either recognizes it or hides it, but there’s a tension between the campuses and it’s true in any system, but the tension in the technology arena between IUPUI and IUB, IU-Bloomington, up until the mid-‘90s was pretty, it was pretty tense. You know, there’re very different opinions, very different directions. We were working, through my tenure here, independently of Bloomington. We were going our own direction. We did the convergence; we did Integrated Technologies – that was not happening in Bloomington. But, by the mid- ‘90s, there was some personnel changes on both campuses and so my counterpart in Bloomington was a faculty member. He’d come out of the faculty just like I had, and he and I kind of were very different but we hit it off in terms of understanding what needed to happen with technology.
His name was Chris, Chris Peebles. So, Chris and I started to meet, and one day, which I remember very well, he and I shook hands and said, “Let’s put this background behind us and just get beyond it,” – I’m talking about the tension between the two campuses. So, from that point forward, Chris and I began to openly compare notes, where the campus was heading, what’s important to the campus, what our goals are, what our funding is. He was doing the same thing.
In a sense, Bloomington was quite a bit behind organizationally because they still had these components in silos. There was academic computing, there was administrative computing, there was telecommunications, there were media resources, there were learning resources – all separately organized, some on the administrative side of campus, some on the academic side of campus. So, he and I began to think through all that in the late, well, the mid- ‘90s.
Mahon: So, was this when you were, after you were Associate Vice Chancellor, was this when you were Associate Vice President for Teaching and Learning
Technologies?
Elmore: That was the big day. So, Chris and I were working for two years on cross- campus coordination. And, by the way, Bloomington provided some real insight in the development of this building and so we knew it was really a good
partnership. So, by 1997, the institution, Indiana University, was ready for real convergence across all campuses. And so President Myles Brand appointed our first Vice President for Information Technology and that was, now our President, but then it was Vice President Michael McRobbie. So, Michael McRobbie was appointed in 1997, first ever Vice President, cabinet level position. My
organization, which included Integrated Technologies, but also the other components at IUPUI, and the Bloomington counterparts were merged and reported to Michael. My role changed, as did Chris’. We each then had two roles; we were both Deans, so that’s an academic appointment. So, Chris became the Dean for Information Technology at the Bloomington campus. I became Dean for Information Technology on the IUPUI campus. In addition to that, we had administrative roles. Chris was the Associate Vice President for Research Technology ,and I was the Associate Vice President for Teaching and Learning Technology. So, I mean, we could spend some time but we won’t do it, going through the portfolio, but the portfolio that I had included all the
classrooms, it included the wireless networks, it included all the desktop computing, all the software for the whole University, not just IUPUI.
Mahon: So, like you said, this was when convergence really started to happen.
Elmore: This is it, right.
Mahon: For all eight campuses.
Elmore: All eight campuses.
Mahon: Okay.
Elmore: And, as I mentioned, Bloomington had some catching up to do because Telecommunications on the administrative side of campus was not part of that original merger; they were brought in a year later. And Media Resources was not part of the original merger; that was on the academic side of campus reporting to the Dean of Faculties in Bloomington. That was brought in later into my
operation. So, the Associate Vice President roles were across campuses. So, my role, say for the desktop or for software, was not only for IUPUI, it was for all of Indiana University. So, the software that we bought, like the Microsoft Office Suite, was for every faculty, staff and student on all campuses. So, that was what was made possible by University-wide coordination in the merger.
Mahon: Okay. So, that was a lot of transition for you in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It was a lot of different positions that you moved through that often overlapped and were intertwined it sounds like. Now, jumping into the 2000s, in 2006, you became Deputy Chief Information Officer for Indiana University and the Ombudsman for the Office for the Vice President for Information Technology, also for Indiana University. So, these were, like you said before, campus-wide appointments, not just IUPUI. So, in these positions, you – and I’m quoting once again from the biography that you provided to me – you “played an instrumental role in planning and implementing ‘One IT at IU,’ which was based on the principles of leveraging all University IT resources while strengthening end-user support at the local campus and school levels. You worked across the eight IU campuses to ensure the regional campuses became equal partners in delivering UITS services, and that they had representation along with the core campuses of Bloomington and Indianapolis.” So, because some people listening to this may not necessarily be students of IU, can you just explain what ‘One IT at IU’ is?
Elmore: Yes. Like I tend to do, I’ll go back a step though to provide the context for it.
When UITS – University Information Technology Services – was established in 1997, that was Vice President Michael McRobbie’s first action. So, he created that organization from the existing organizations as they were at that time from Indianapolis and Bloomington. He created the structure that I just mentioned, which included the Teaching and Learning component and the Research component, and kind of bi-equal academic leadership on Indianapolis and Bloomington. So, that was ’97. At the same time, he launched Indiana University’s first IT Strategic Plan across all campuses. We spent 18 months, two years, developing a document, which is called “Architecture for the 21st Century.” It’s online. It’s a good read. It has 10 broad goals for Indiana University and in those 10 goals, there are 68 actions. Those actions include
things like lifecycle funding every desktop. So, they’re not minor, you know.
There are 15,000 desktops at Indiana University, or were at that time; how do you fund 15,000 desktops every three years? We had no mechanism to do that.
So, the plan did address those kinds of issues. So, the Strategic Plan, the 68 action items, were assigned to the Associate Vice President. So, I was responsible…
Mahon: Which was you, yes.
Elmore: … for implementing some of them, all of them in my portfolio, and Chris was responsible for implementing those in his portfolio. And there were two other Associate Vice Presidents at that time. They weren’t on the academic side, but one was for Telecommunications and Networking and the other was for
Information Systems, student systems, HR systems, and all those things. So, there were four of us and so four of us began to implement those plans. We did that as part of our regular duties. We had direct reports that managed the day- to-day operations of UITS. So, moving forward a little bit, over the next three years, most all of those plans were completed. One thing, we had an infusion of funds from the State. It was a good time to be in technology because the State of Indiana provided resources, financial resources, that helped us meet a lot of those requirements. After those were very close to being completed
implementing, then the real leadership question coming from Michael
McRobbie’s office was: How do we now use this foundation? So, in a sense, that first plan created an unbelievable foundation. It was best, and I won’t be modest about this, there was no other institution like Indiana University at that time which had this type of technology across the board – Teaching, Learning, Research, Systems, Networking – it was fantastic. The big question is, how do we use that now? So, a second planning exercise was begun and this one was harder. We know how to do technology. I mean, the action items of the 68 that I implemented, I know how to do that. It’s management, it’s leadership, and I know how to do it. Making technology work for the faculty is different. How do we use this technology to really increase efficiency for the whole operation?
That’s different. I mean, it’s harder. So, the next plan was really focused on people, not technology, and that plan started under McRobbie’s administration. It was completed after he moved on to the Presidency, but it’s called Empowering People. And now, to answer your question, so my role during that time changed.
Instead of now being responsible for Teaching and Learning and being the Dean of this campus, we needed University-wide coordination across the divisions of UITS and someone who could reach out to the various campus constituents, the faculty, staff, students, and that’s when my role changed. So, that’s when the Deputy role came.
Mahon: Got it.
Elmore: Technically, all of the resources of UITS kind of were part of my responsibility, but not really. We had very good Associate Vice Presidents who now either reported to me or reported to the Vice President, who rarely manage the day-to- day operations. So, my role, especially my more recent role before retiring, was implementing the ‘One IT at IU.’ What that means is that it would be an
oversimplification to say it was a centralization – and, by the way, nobody wants centralization – so, we stopped using the words centralization and decentralizing.
What we really thought about doing is thinking about the resources of Indiana
