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