One familiar voice at the end of the LTS Help Desk phone line is hanging it up after 32 years at Lehigh. Doug Reese, Computing Consultant for Library and Technology Services and tech support extraordinaire, has announced his retirement from Lehigh, effective December 20, 2023.
Doug is well-known to many Lehigh students, faculty, and staff as resident calming voice, expert software technician, and creative problem-solver, ready to assist with a classroom technology issue, a desktop computer problem, software gone haywire, or even recommending the best place near campus to get a bite to eat. It’s estimated that Doug has logged over 25,000 service requests during his time at the Help Desk.
Reese has been a fixture in Library and Technology Services since 1991. After arriving at Lehigh from the University of Florida where he served as Sr. Programmer/Analyst, Doug first worked in what was then known as User Services, providing desktop computing, software, security, and web development support to the campus community. Since that time, he’s seen the evolution of computing at Lehigh -- from the early days of Windows 95 to Y2K to mobile and cloud computing -- and he remembers Lehigh’s first campus wide information system, a graphics-free "network server," and when the email client of choice was Pine.
“Doug’s breadth of knowledge has been so valuable to LTS and to the campus community,” said Stacey Kimmel-Smith, Assistant Director for Client Services. “He's the swiss army knife of the IT world, comfortable writing technical specs, working with data in Excel/SAS, coding HTML/CSS, and troubleshooting, well, anything.”
Outside of his computing consultant role, Doug also provided part-time support to the Web and Mobile Services team, working on department website theme upgrades in Drupal 7 and training Lehigh staff on publishing to new or updated websites.
Doug received a BSE in Computer and Information Sciences from the University of Florida in 1984. As a Lehigh adjunct, he taught SAS programming in the College of Business for many years. In addition he taught LTS seminars on topics such as SPSS, word processing, networking and Internet services, programming, and web authoring. He participated in the design and implementation of the Lehigh campus portal, which received the 2004 Annual Best of the Web award from the Center for Digital Education. The same year, Doug was also the recipient of a Lehigh Tradition of Excellence award. He also served on numerous committees, such as the Web Implementation Task Force and the Information Infrastructure strategic planning team during the transition from Information Resources (IR) to LTS in 1999. He also served as the university’s Webmaster for two years.
Friends and colleagues describe Doug as a true generalist, a unicorn who could translate technical topics with ease and guide users through complex steps with patience and humor.
“He's just fun to be around -- quick-witted and always ready with a novel insight or tidbit, able to hold a conversation on anything and everything, from tech trends to game theory to orchid care to pop culture,” Kimmel-Smith said. “It's always prefaced with the disclaimer, "I'm not an expert, but…" We wonder what he would say on a subject when he does claim expertise!
We invite the campus community to express their appreciation for Doug’s service to the university and have created a publicly-available Kudoboard to collect well wishes and memories from colleagues, clients, and friends. Please join us in celebrating Doug’s contributions to Lehigh and LTS!