On Mike’s passing in April, many eloquent tributes were paid to him that described in considerable detail his life and his intellectual and scholarly contributions. I tried to add to these at the time in the news release paying tribute to Mike’s illustrious career and in which I also recounted the debt I owed personally to Mike, and how, in short, I would not have been here without Mike. But I will not repeat all of this in my remarks today.
Instead, searching for what I could say beyond what I, and others, had already said about Mike, caused me to reflect about the wider role of the faculty in a great research university. A number of my predecessors as IU president spoke with great eloquence on this subject.
William Lowe Bryan said “A university has as the first condition of its greatness, not its great plant of buildings, apparatus and books, but a faculty of quality, senior men [and women] of known position in the academic world.”[1]
John Ryan underscored this in an address to the university by noting “Indiana University is, first and foremost, a place of scholarship, a place of learning, a place of pursuit of wisdom and truth. …The university is the collective devotion, wisdom, and invigorating spirit of the faculty, using all resources at their command—the libraries, the laboratories, the time, the facilities—to the benefit of our students.”[2]
And Herman Wells speaking to the IU Trustees said “A university cannot render distinguished service to its constituency without a distinguished faculty; therefore, the selection of faculty personnel is of first importance.”[3]
A simple equation as befits a commemoration of a great logician and algebraist – a great university equals a great faculty. And in the history of Indiana University Mike was one of the greatest – and one of the rarest.
Why rare? In over 50 years of academic life, I have seen basically three types of faculty members.
There are those who are excellent teachers, who inspire students at all levels year after year, and who light that fire of learning in them of which Plato speaks in his seventh letter[4] that changes and transforms their lives forever.
There are those who are excellent researchers, whose intellectual accomplishments and contributions range far and deep, influencing or creating whole fields of study, all the time maintaining the highest standards of quality, rigor, and integrity.
And then there are those who are excellent academic administrators, who take on the difficult and often under-appreciated work of ensuring the myriad daily tasks and demands of academic life are accomplished with skill, tact, and the highest level of competency, but who can also bring change, who can open up glittering new academic opportunities previously thought beyond reach.
We can all recognize these types. We all know many colleagues who are superb in at least one of these areas. We probably know many who are outstanding at the first two. But a member of the faculty who excels at all three is of the rarest kind. Mike was such a person.
As a teacher he was beloved and renowned by generations of students, and his impact can be felt through the accomplishments of many of his former graduate students, now distinguished in their own right.
As a researcher he ranged far and wide over many fields of logic, computer science, informatics, and philosophy, making major contributions in many of them, the pinnacle of them maybe being his work in algebraic logic, which was the first I knew of Mike’s work in the early 1970s.
Others today will speak of his accomplishments in both these areas, though I won’t—as much as I would like to as someone whose very earliest research owes much to Mike.
But instead, I want to talk about Mike’s work as an academic administrator, where his contributions were probably least known, but ultimately of maybe equal importance. The best academic administrators labor much of the time in the shadows.
Mike, of course, took on one of the most important academic administrative jobs in the last 50 years at IU when he became the inaugural dean in 1999 of what is now the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, then IU’s first new school since the early 1970s. I am always proud to say that I was one of a number of people who strongly recommended him for this position to Myles Brand.
Mike, of course, carried out these duties with great skill and dedication. IU is much in his debt for all he did to firmly establish the Luddy School as one of the major schools of its kind in the country and for its growth and development ever since.
But his CV also demonstrates extensive administrative contributions to IU almost too numerous to mention. It was to Mike who I turned in 1997 to chair the committee that led to the development of the first strategic plan for information technology at IU, a plan now recognized around the world as seminal and sweeping in its scope and one of the finest of its kind ever produced. He served at nearly every administrative level in the College of Arts and Sciences, in his original department, Philosophy, and then in Computer Science, on search committees in nearly every discipline—including music, in faculty governance, and on committees dealing with nearly every area of concern that a great university has.
And outside the walls of the university, his professional service on editorial boards, review committees, and conferences was also wide-ranging. He was a committed internationalist who understood viscerally the critical and central role of international engagement in research and education, and he travelled and spoke widely in numerous contexts and roles all over the world. This was, in fact, how I first met him in 1975 at the Australian National University.
In short, Mike was through his excellence as a teacher, through his excellence as a researcher, and through his excellence as an academic administrator, a truly great university citizen. He is, to adapt a phrase of Churchill’s, a true IU worthy.
To Sally, Jon, Jennifer, to their partners and children, and to their whole family, Laurie and I offer our most sincere condolences on Mike’s passing. I know your grief is profound. But you have the consolation of knowing that Mike will be long remembered and revered through the enduring impact he had at so many levels at an institution he loved and served so well for over 50 years.
Source notes
[1] William Lowe Bryan, “The Coming of the University,” Commencement address delivered June 24, 1908, as reprinted in William Lowe Bryan, The Spirit of Indiana: Commencement Addesses, 1902-1917 and Earlier Addresses, (University Bookstore, 1917), 45.
[2] John W. Ryan, “Address to the University,” delivered October 25, 1973, IU Archives.
[3] Herman B Wells, August 1942 report to the Board of Trustees, IU Archives.
[4] Plato, Letter VII, to the “Friends and Followers of Dion,” in John M. Cooper (ed.), Plato: Complete Works, (Hackett Publishing, 1997), 1659.