Friday, July 24, 2009

Chronicle Article on Yeh's Departure

When the news about Registrar David Yeh's departure was broken on Wednesday by the Daily Sun, I wrote that Yeh's main legacy would be the rocky implementation of PeopleSoft.

The Chronicle also focuses on this issue, but avoids any discussion of the many, many problems associated with PeopleSoft:

One of Yeh's major contributions at Cornell was the implementation of a student information system that included new technologies to deliver "one-stop shopping" services online. "We were among the earliest schools to give students direct access to their own information," Yeh said. He began the initiative in 1992 and has spent his last years at Cornell developing and implementing the system.

But Yeh was able to accomplish some things without wreaking havoc on students and servers:

Yeh also led logistical planning for such major events as visits from the Dalai Lama, Israeli President Shimon Peres, former president of Taiwan Lee Teng-hui, Ph.D. '68, and former President Bill Clinton. In addition, Yeh oversaw the renovation and restoration of McGraw Tower and the Cornell chimes in 1999 and Bailey Hall in 2007.

The article has some nice quotes about Yeh from Susan Murphy and Frank Rhodes. The Saudi university he's going to work for sounds interesting, and it's good to see that some of our oil dollars are going to something worthwhile:

KAUST is being built as an international, graduate-level research university, where gender, race, ethnicity, religion and age are not defining factors, Yeh said. "It's really wonderful to be asked to participate in that endeavor."

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