URCS 25th Anniversary Gala Dinner
Reminiscences from Jill
Gilda O. Forster is the longest surviving member of the
department. She was hired as department secretary in the summer of
1974, and became administrative assistant in 1978 and administrator in
1984. In 1993-94 she received an award for outstanding contribution
from the College of Arts and Science. Below, in her words, is how it
all began.
In mid June 1974, I had my first interview for the job as department
secretary for the new Computer Science Department that was just
established. The interview was held in the President's Office. It went
well, and about half an hour afterwards, I got a call from Lisa
Falzer, Mr. Sproull's administrator, who offered me the job. My
response was that I was not all that certain I should accept the offer
since I was a bit leery of this Feldman guy from California. He seemed
very nice to talk to, but he looked a little on the ``wild''
side. Since I was having difficulty with the person for whom I was
currently working, I didn't want to take the chance of going from the
frying pan into the fire. So I said, ``I would like to think it
over.'' This was a startling response to Mrs. Falzer, and she
replied that she would see if Mr. Feldman would agree to another
meeting. We met the next week, and I was convinced that he really
wasn't as wild as he looked.
On the first of August we got things started. We had eight offices in
the Hylan Building with office furniture and bookshelves, and that was
it! When I came to work that first day, my office had a desk, chair,
file cabinet, an old typewriter that the Math Department loaned us
until the new one arrived, and a pencil. There was no phone yet, so I
went down to the Statistics Department to make phone calls, then
proceeded to requisition all the items needed for the other offices. I
had only four weeks to get everything done. Of course, the three
faculty members were not going to show up for a few weeks. Jerry
Feldman was in India, Jim Low was making his way here from California,
and Paul Rovner, who was moving his family from California, called and
asked if I could rent him a house. Yes, he had talked with a realtor
and knew he wanted to be in the Brighton area, and asked if I could go
and look at a couple of the houses the realtor found. So my first task
was securing a rental house for one of our new faculty whom I had not
even met.
Now I was really worried about the decision I had made in agreeing to
take this job. But as it turned out we had a great faculty, and our
first grad students (who were recruited by Jerry while he was still at
Stanford) were wonderful. And although the next several years were
extremely busy, we had a great time building this department.
Last change: 7 Nov 2000 by ferguson