Robert Sams, executive director of Communication Services and Information Technology, has informed me of his intent to retire in June after more than 18 years of service with UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
When Bob joined the newly formed Office of Communication Services in December 1995, most people were still reading books and writing letters on paper. The way the world communicates has changed considerably since then. With his rich knowledge about communications technology, Bob has guided ANR's expansion of services from just the venerable printed page and VHS tapes to distributing educational information and services through the Internet via websites, videos, online learning and e-books. ANR and California have benefited from Bob's innovative and visionary thinking. He has forged fresh communications paths for our future and will be hard to replace.
Over the next few months, Bob will continue to work with me to help implement the first phase of UC Path and to consult with me on the strategy for CSIT going forward.
Karl Krist, information technology manager, will be leaving ANR on March 7 to take a position with Foundation Plant Services at UC Davis.
During his 13 years of serving ANR, Karl has made numerous contributions to the connectivity of the division. He led the creation of the original Site Builder, which greatly simplified the process of building a website and gave all ANR websites continuity and consistency of use and appearance. Today there are over 600 websites using Site Builder, which has been upgraded to include many time-saving functions. Karl has developed several applications used routinely by ANR employees, including Collaborative Tools, Surveys, Datastore, Directory, Portal, FileVault and more. To read more about Karl's ANR career, visit this blog post written by Dave Krause: //ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=12990.
I will begin the recruitment and replacement process for these positions. In the interim, Dave Underwood is leading the IT support team and Dave Krause is leading Web support and application programming.
Please join me in thanking Bob and Karl for their many contributions to ANR.
With much appreciation,
Tu M. Tran
Associate Vice President for Business Operations
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