Thanks to Professor James Fabrey

March 1, 2017

Deke Kassabian

In March of this year, after many years of exceptional service, Dr. Fabrey stepped down - not from his role as professor and chair, of course, but from his role as special assistant to the Vice President of Information Services.

With significant growth in the department of computer science over the years, and increased responsibilities, Dr. Fabrey needed to re-balance the limited number of hours in a week. Although our official relationship is changing, our good friendship is not and I know that Dr. Fabrey will stay connected with the IS&T Division in a variety of ways going forward.

"I am very proud of the progress that our division has made since 2008," he said, "and this has been well documented in 31 issues of our Tech Notes newsletter," referring to the well-known communications of the IS&T Division.

On the occasion of our recognition for Dr. Fabrey, Adel Barimani, former Vice President of Information Services, noted that Dr. Fabrey was instrumental in the creation of Academic Computing for WCU. He went on to say that, "He has been a great mentor to a number of the Information Services staff over the years as well as to many WCU students. In fact, a number of the employees of the division have been his students. He has been a visionary and a great contributor to the success of the IS Division. His contributions have always been greatly appreciated and his invaluable insights and services will benefit the division for years to come."

Dr. Fabrey shared some memories with the Division earlier this month at his recognition ceremony. "In my previous life, as the first Director of Academic Computing from 1985 - 1992, I had a staff of 5 people plus a team of 6 graduate assistants," he said. "There was no Web Team yet - because there was no web! The Telecom team was actually the Telephone team - we had no network! We connected to the Internet through an arrangement with Villanova University. We have really come a long way."

We sincerely thank him for his guidance and good counsel over the years, and especially for his running of Tech Meetings and his "editor in chief" role for Tech Notes.