Gary Ott
executive director, University Computing and Telecommunications Services, Academic Affairs and Research
It is no secret that Gary Ott loved work. In fact, even when he took a vacation, he
didn't stop thinking about Wichita State.
“I’ll always remember several occasions when I was out of the office on business
or vacation, and I would send them (Jim Rogers and Jim Sullivan) e-mails asking about
the status of specific projects,” said Ott. “They would always reply, ‘Do you ever
stop thinking about WSU?’
“Nope, I spent seven days a week for 40 years living my work at WSU. I enjoyed almost
every minute of it,” said Ott.
One of his first projects was loading the registrar’s punch card files for thousands
of students to magnetic tape storage. When arriving to pick up the cards, Laura Cross,
dean emeritus of admissions and records, asked what he was doing with the punch cards.
“I said, ‘We are going to load the card data to tape storage and then destroy the
cards.’
“I really thought she was going to faint! I explained she wouldn't need the cards
anymore. She looked me in the eye and said, ‘You young whippersnapper!’
“It took some time for Laura to trust computing to meet her needs, but she eventually
became one of my strongest supporters,” said Ott.
During Ott’s 40-year tenure from systems analyst to executive director of university
computing and telecommunications services, the technology changed dramatically.
Ott said, “The campus technology infrastructure started as punch cards and now supports
more than 5,000 computers connected to the high speed campus network with more than
300 servers. Disk storage has gone from megabytes (1 million characters) of storage
to terabytes (1 quadrillion characters) of storage. A single flash drive today has
more storage capacity than the data center had in the 1970s.”
“Meeting campus demand for new technology services made my job interesting, challenging
and very rewarding,” said Ott.
He cited the Jabara Hall project as an amazing accomplishment, moving the entire
computing and telecommunications services operations from Neff Hall to Jabara Hall
in less than a day. In addition, the Banner WIN project was completed on time and
under budget.
In 1997, Ott received the President’s Award for Distinguished Service.
He credits the people at WSU, too numerous to mention, for making the job so rewarding
and enjoyable. Ott appreciated the cooperation and support to do what was right for
students, faculty and staff.
In retirement, Ott plans to “do what I want when I want to do it,” including spending
more time with his wife, children and grandchildren, and spending more time at a second
home in the Ozarks.