Faculty Profiles

Debra Calliss

Trevor Cohen

James Collofello

Partha Dasgupta

Dijiang Huang

Bill Lewis

Faye Navabi

Aviral Shrivastava

Guoliang Xue

Jieping Ye

faculty profiles

Bill Lewis

Associate Director of Academic Affairs
School of Computing and Informatics

William Lewis

Registering for classes, paying tuition, purchasing student health insurance and turning in an assignment would have been a daunting day’s worth of errands for an ASU student 10 years ago. Today, such matters can be taken care of in a matter of minutes due, in part, to the leadership efforts of one man. Bill Lewis, the founding chair of the Computer Science and Engineering Department and currently the associate director of the School of Computing and Informatics, played a vital role in ASU’s transition to enterprise computing.

Lewis, a faculty member at ASU for 42 years and the former Chief Information Officer of the university, defines enterprise computing at ASU as, “the integration of computing into the university environment so that it supports the mission of the institution.” Basically, enterprise computing, as it applies to life at ASU, is what enables faculty, students and staff to access
every university resource available to them from one integrated network.

“We have to make sure that privacy is maintained, that the student’s record is there tomorrow, that it’s always available for the student,” Lewis said. “We need to make sure that the system doesn’t crash and burn, especially during critical periods of time like registration.”
Lewis joined ASU’s industrial engineering faculty in 1965. In 1979, ASU’S dean of the College of Engineering asked him to set up a department of computer science and engineering. “The hectic growth of creating a program from nothing was probably
the most rewarding thing that I have ever done,”
recalled Lewis.

There have been many other fulfilling moments as well. In addition to the multiple roles and responsibilities that Lewis has taken on at ASU over the years, he and his wife, Mary Frances, have raised seven children and have taken in over 30 foster children. This fall, Lewis is teaching ASU 101, a new course that will introduce freshmen to unique opportunities within the university.