KNS reports [1] that U.T. has a new interim Chief Information Officer, Jesse Poore. He sounds like a smart and accomplished guy. With a background in scientific and engineering computing, though, I'm not sure he's the kind of person they need.

It reminds me of back when the industry was desperate for programmers trained in business, accounting, and COBOL, and U.T. only taught FORTRAN.

A major IT department is a huge and complicated business within a business, especially at a university where it's hard to imagine a more diverse set of applications and users. Running it has to be one of the toughest corporate type jobs there is, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

From a systems management standpoint, the scientific and engineering applications seem like only a small part, used mostly by uber-geeks who do their own thing but probably can't balance their own checkbook much less put out a payroll for ten thousand employees every two weeks.

And somebody has to deal with the thousands of mortals trying to install the latest virus protection updates on their bloated and broken Windows boxes lest the latest round of infected "ten reasons dogs are better companions than men" email forwards crash The Matrix. Come to think of it, that might actually be a bigger challenge than aiming a neutron beam at a specific electron and hitting it or whatever it is those uber-geeks do.

Anyway, see the previous discussion with a lot of free advice here [2].