Zimmerman, Leader of IT Services, to Retire

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Robert Zimmerman, associate vice chancellor for information technology services.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Robert E. Zimmerman, associate vice chancellor for information technology services at the University of Arkansas, will retire June 30, after 25 years with the university. During that time he guided the university through a period of revolutionary technological change and into the digital realm of the 21^st century.

To put his achievements in perspective: When Zimmerman joined the University of Arkansas as director of computing services in February 1987, students stood on line at the registrar’s office or in the Arkansas Union Ballroom to sign up for classes. There was no “online registration.”

The Internet existed, but most people didn’t know about it; the same for email. There were a few large computers on campus, but no personal computers on office desks. Typewriters and pianos had keyboards. A mouse was something you would not want in your office. All university records were files on paper, kept in paper file folders and stored in file cabinets.

Apple was a fruit.

Hardware meant something like a doorknob.

Bob Zimmerman was among the people on campus who knew this was all changing and he led the department that made it possible for those changes to happen at the University of Arkansas.

Under his guidance, he and his colleagues in IT Services:

• Moved the campus from a system with a few people working on mainframe computers that filled a room to systems made up of smaller, more flexible servers.

• Created a University of Arkansas web presence, the first World Wide Web service in Arkansas.

• Enabled the university to put personal computers on desktops in offices across campus.

• Centralized and standardized computer labs to meet students’ ever-evolving needs and expectations.

• Created the Business and Administrative Strategic Information System, better known as BASIS, for faculty and staff information.

• Worked with university academic leaders to implement the state-of-the-art Integrated Student Information System, or ISIS.

• Provided faculty with digital teaching tools such as learning management systems, videoconferencing, lecture capture and web conferencing, as well as the training to use these tools effectively.

• Developed the university’s cyber infrastructure, enabling the university to be the first higher education institution in Arkansas to provide researchers access to a supercomputer.

• Developed and implemented a secure optical network and wireless campus network.

• Continued to improve computer hardware and storage on campus to reduce costs and conserve energy.

These accomplishments affected virtually every aspect of operations on the University of Arkansas campus. However, many of Zimmerman’s achievements only started on campus – by the time he and his colleagues were done with a project, it very often impacted higher education throughout Arkansas.

For example, soon after he arrived on campus, Zimmerman began working with his colleagues Craig Brown, Dennis Brewer and David Merrifield to demonstrate that a campus computer network was possible. They used a grant from the National Science Foundation to build the first Internet connection in Arkansas. It consisted of one workstation connecting at 64 kilobits per second. Again, for perspective, today a campus laptop connects to the Internet about 1,500 times faster.

It may seem like a modest beginning, but they had proved it could be done. With that success, the group started building the first university network.

“Our assignment was to find agreement and create consensus among interested university technology leaders,” Zimmerman recalled. “The committee included Jim Gattis, Paul Cronan, David Douglas, David Kreider, Donnie Dutton, and others who developed recommendations for the design of the campus network and a funding model.”

Then-Chancellor Dan Ferritor provided a budget of $100,000 per year for three years, and the campus network that resulted was more than a success – it became a model.

In 1991, Zimmerman used that model to launch ARKnet, a project linking all public and private Arkansas higher education institutions to a statewide network. 

“It was our goal to encourage participation from any college or university that wanted to be included in ARKnet,” Zimmerman explained. 

The goal was not as simple as it sounds.

“Among the most important accomplishments of his long career at the University of Arkansas, Dr. Zimmerman was able to bring all of the higher education institutions, including four-year public and private universities and two-year colleges, together to work cooperatively to build out ARKnet,” said David Merrifield, who was associate director of computing services when he worked with Zimmerman on ARKnet.  “Such a level of collaboration among schools that typically compete with each other for students, funds and programs was previously unheard of.”

ARKnet was funded through a series of NSF grants and grew to include around 70 member institutions. It was used as a model by the U.S. Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure, a panel appointed by President Clinton to develop a strategy for providing Internet access to the country’s colleges, schools and libraries. 

In 2002, then-Chancellor John White asked Zimmerman to connect the University of Arkansas to the National LambdaRail, a national high-performance, high-speed, advanced fiber optic network owned by the U.S. research and education community.

Zimmerman once again focused on the collaborative model and turned to other Arkansas research institutions, inviting participation. As the Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network, or ARE-ON, developed, it again grew to include all public universities in the state.

In December 2005, then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee recognized the importance and potential for ARE-ON and provided $6.4 million for the project with an additional $9.4 million in state higher education bonds in 2006. Zimmerman served as acting executive director of ARE-ON with David Merrifield as the chief technology officer. In 2008, Mike Abbiatti was named executive director of the network while Merrifield remained in the role of chief technology officer. ARE-ON continues to connect researchers from participating Arkansas institutions to their colleagues around the country and around the world.

During his career at the university, Zimmerman has served as the principal investigator for network-related grants and funds totaling over $25.7 million, and the ARE-ON network is possibly Zimmerman’s ultimate achievement: a way of using advanced communication technologies to promote research, public service and economic development in Arkansas.

But Mike Abbiatti, who has worked closely with Zimmerman, points to another of his colleague’s outstanding achievements: “Bob views his IT Services staff as family, and works ‘behind the scenes’ to make sure his employees are happy and healthy. That’s a side of Bob few people see.”

Zimmerman’s most recent project is working with IT Services staff to develop a statewide digital library collection, digitized images of books, museum collections, library collections, learning objects, music, maps, databases and other holdings. Ultimately people will be able to access these materials using mobile devices such as phones, tablets and e-readers, as well as desktop computers.

Zimmerman received his doctoral degree from the University of North Dakota in 1970. He served as a professor and administrator at Northern State University and the University of South Dakota before coming to the University of Arkansas in 1987.