It is, of course, a signal honor for me to be asked to make some remarks on this occasion of the dedication of the University Computer Center to the memory of Gerry Weeg. I approached the task with feelings of deep humility and not a little anxiety. How presumptuous of me to attempt to take the measure of a human being for whom I had such great respect and affection, and a human being who worked with such intensity, conviction, and effectiveness in an area that I do not even yet fully comprehend. I make the effort, nevertheless, with the understanding that you will keep in mind my limitations in accomplishing the task.

To set the stage for my remarks, let me review a few of the highlights of Gerry's personal history and accomplishments, even though they may be familiar to many of you. The memorial resolution prepared by Computer Science Professors Don Epley, Art Fleck, and Ted Sjoerdsma, which was read and resolved in a meeting of the faculty of the College of Liberal Arts on April 20, 1977, serves this purpose nicely:

Gerard P. Weeg was born in Davenport, Iowa, on October 29, 1927. He received his early instruction in Davenport, including his B.S. degree from St. Ambrose College in 1949. A year later while serving as a teaching assistant, he obtained his M.S. degree from Oklahoma State University. He returned to his alma mater to teach mathematics, but after one year obtained a teaching assistantship at Iowa State University, where he completed his Ph.D. degree in mathematics in 1955. He spent two years as a mathematician for the Remington Rand Univac Corporation in St. Paul, and then from 1956 to 1963 went from Assistant Professor to Professor of Mathematics at Michigan State University. Gerry served as Visiting Professor at Iowa State University for one year prior to accepting his appointment at the University of Iowa, and during a sabbatical in 1969 was Visiting Professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts.

Gerard P. Weeg came to the University of Iowa in 1964 as Director of the University Computer Center and to establish a Computer Science Department within the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the College of Liberal Arts.

Prior to coming to this University, Professor Weeg's academic work was in numerical analysis and algebraic automata theory. His early paper on algebraic automata was widely referenced, and he co-authored a well-received textbook, Introduction to Numerical Analysis.

As a teacher and computer science educator, Professor Weeg's contributions were both universal and personal. Known as "Doc" Weeg to all, with the title signifying affection as well as honor, he attracted many bright young minds into the new discipline of computer science. Indeed, with a handful of other far-sighted educators in the United States, Professor Weeg defined the science of computing and thereby created an academic discipline. As chairman of a new department, Professor Weeg guided the development of a sound academic program with solid academic standards through a difficult period of uncertainty as to which direction the new science should evolve. To his students, he was a superb teacher. His technical expertise and preparation, combined with a natural enthusiasm and flair for humor, made his classes both an education and a delight. To his colleagues, he was the epitome of a good friend: always supportive and concerned, his boundless energy could be immediately turned in their direction by the simplest request.

As Director of the Computer Center, Professor Weeg lead the development of grant proposals which brought funding for major equipment additions to the University and for the development of a true regional center directly serving about fifteen educational institutions in eastern Iowa. He was instrumental in the establishment of a computer-to-computer link between Iowa State University and our own campus. His leadership was strong yet flexible, and his efforts resulted in the potential of academic computing being reached on this campus and others, especially as a service to many other disciplines.

Professor Weeg's ability, expertise, and experience in computing brought recognition throughout the world to him and this University. At the national level, he was one of the founders of a national organization, CONDUIT, whose mission is the development and distribution of computing materials for use in all academic curricula. He helped initiate a now annual national meeting on computing in all aspects of the undergraduate curriculum, familiarly known as CCUC. He served as a visiting lecturer for the Association of Computing Machinery, was called upon as a consultant for academic computing by universities and colleges in seven states, and attended and addressed national and international conferences in Europe and North America. In all of these things, he further distinguished the University by his association with it.

It occurred to me that there was no need to present my abstractions of Gerry's thinking to you. A far better way, it seemed to me, would be to bring you selected examples of his thoughts, pulled from the files that accumulated in my office over the years that he was Director of the Computer Center.

First I have excerpted some statements from some of his more formal writings. This one appeared in the Forward of the Proceedings of a Conference on Computers in the Undergraduate Curricula, held on this campus in June of 1970 with the support of the National Science Foundation:

It is apparent that the computer presents our society with the possibility of making a division of effort, with those tasks which benefit by man's insight, ingenuity, and instant memory recall to be assigned to man; while those tasks which benefit from the speed, accuracy, repeatability, and indefatigability of an automaton to be assigned to the computer. What is more, the unfolding of computing in government, industry, and research has demonstrated that formerly unsolvable problems become solvable, only to be replaced by facets of those problems, not to mention totally new problems, which reveal themselves as being equally important and more challenging than the solved ones. The analogy to scaling a forbidding peak in a range of mountains, only to discover a new range of even more challenging mountains which were formerly blocked from sight by what once appeared insuperable peaks is, I believe, an appropriate one.

Among the purposes of a college education is discovering and placing in context all those concepts, forces, and events of the past and present whose comprehension ought to allow the individual to weave his way through the complexities of life. It seems clear that among the events and forces of very recent history is the technological revolution, and its central force, the computer. Since it appears to be true that computing is of pervasive importance in our society, every field of collegiate study ought to examine its content vis-a-vis computing. Once again, the mountain range to be revealed in the process, I contend, is one of even greater teaching. The more exciting motivation of working with real data on real problems, with instant reward (or lack of it) for success (or failure), and with the student's assuming full responsibility for his success or failure, all contribute to greater teaching.

In June, 1972, Gerry spoke at the Third Annual Conference on Computers in the Undergraduate Curricula on the topic: "Regional Networks -- Revolution in College Computing." Before he went on to advocate networking, he had this to say about the place of computing in the educational process:

We want to use the computer in conjunction with classes of every conceivable discipline, from the sciences, to the social sciences, to the humanities and arts. We see the computer as a tool which can change the dimensions of the ordinary student ….the student will:

Gerry's thinking about the use of computers in instruction had moved forward at the time that he participated in a panel discussion at the EDUCOM Fall Conference in October, 1973, which was concerned with "Trends in Instructional Use of Computers":

At Iowa, then, we are in the process of rethinking our computer delivery system. For the past three years, we have had collegiate computer fund allocations, which in turn were parceled out to departments, and from there to individual courses and instructors. Yet, there has been no convenient way to parcel those funds out to the student, for whom, lest we forget, the university exists. The system is fiscally satisfactory, but it in no way contributes to the instructional use of computing.

In March, 1974, Gerry spoke on the "The American Experience" at the Conference on Computers in Higher Education. His conviction about the place of the computer in the educational process continued to be strong:

In my estimation, the role of education is the joining of junior and senior scholars to review and understand the great events, thoughts, forces, and discoveries of the past and present, so that these scholars will be prepared to adapt to, and hopefully control, their future. Clearly, one such force is the computer. I now firmly believe that every college graduate must possess at least some degree of computer literacy. I believe this can only be attained by the student's having been exposed to the role of computing in most courses which he studies, and not just as a separate subject to be studied apart from his other courses.

And here lies the happy coincidence. For not only can the student thereby acquire computer literacy, he can also learn his subject better, more deeply, with greater relationship to the real world, and probably learn more than by conventional methods. At least this is the conjecture to be proved over the next decade or so.

And now, a couple of excerpts from my files that are less formal, more personal, and on occasion somewhat pungent. On August 1, 1972, he wrote a memo about computing and instruction which included these thoughts:

For the past fifteen years, at least up until the last two or three years, computer center directors have been telling university presidents that though computing is essential to a university, it is cheap. And then directors would proceed to find all sorts of income to support computing, relying on the university itself for only very modest support. The purpose of that charade was to convince administrations that computing could remain on campus. I have also been party to this deception, and only recently has it dawned on me that the disservice was not to the president nor to the director, but to the student and somewhat less to the faculty. For in the process, computer centers become the thralldom of research and commercial activity. Then, when economic stringencies descended upon the nation, they also fell upon computer centers. The result at many schools, and at Iowa, was a strict rationing of computer funds. I am trying to say that faculty morale is going to hell in a handbasket, and if we don't stem that tide, we will lose the 10% of our faculty which has made Iowa a creditable institution.

We may be embarking on a phase of university life in which we identify instruction as the most important part of university life. And we have in the last few years seen that instruction become vitalized more and more when computing is used as an adjunct. As a matter of fact, there are those who believe (me) that computing is as integral to instruction as the other great resource, the library.

Now comes my vision. I would like to have computing serve as a spearhead for a re-awakening of the pride and purpose of this university. I would like to see the 10% of our faculty upon whom we pin our hopes for innovation and excellence be rekindled, and then have them bring the rest of the university along. My proposed method is to make computing massively and easily available for all instruction; and to make the availability of such computing so stable and permanent that instructors will spend the long hours needed to rethink and redo their courses. I see that this can be done only by providing a link between the student and the computer of such a nature that the student can maximize the man-machine relationship. In short, I see that it is imperative for the university to embark on the creation of a mass access interactive computing system.

My dream continues ... as follows: We need to place large quantities of terminals on this campus. They must be truly available to students, so that I can visualize clumps of ten or more in multiple locations on campus. The computer power to drive more than a handful of these terminals does not exist today at the UCC, and that must be provided. And above all, the use of this system must be free to the student. Indeed, at the student's initial registration at the university, he will receive his student computer ID number which will then allow him full computer use as long as he is a student.

Reprise: In that land flowing with milk and honey which will result from the farsighted decision made now to charge ahead on computing, the faculty will have reacquired its self-confidence; we will have reversed the flow of our good minds back to the university; students will be learning deeply, permanently, and quickly; funding agencies will be clamoring to invest money in our grand enterprise; and the legislature, seeing that we have returned to full vigor, can safely resume beating us about the head and shoulders without fear of our collapsing, thereby depriving it of ways to please the voters.

In a working paper, prepared in October, 1972, entitled "The Realization of the Fourth Revolution at the University of Iowa: A Worm's Eye View", Gerry spelled out his plans in more detail, concluding that "If our objective therefore is to have 50% of our students using the computer for instruction in an intensive fashion, we need ... 240 terminals minimum. If those students have several computer-oriented courses instead of just one, the number of terminals must increase by some multiplicative factor." This thinking was, of course, at the heart of a proposal which was written almost single-handedly by Gerry but presented to the administration in the name of an ad hoc Committee on Computing under the title of "Computing in Undergraduate Education at the University of Iowa: A Proposal to Make Iowa a Leader in the Use of the Emerging Educational Technology." As many of you know, this report became dubbed the "dream document" which, except for some slippage in the implementation schedule, became and continues to be a blueprint for the integration of computer technology into Iowa's educational programs.

While Gerry was always a forthright person, devoid of deviousness, he was complex. Consequently, more than a few simple phrases are required to characterize him. It has been said of him that he was:

Gerry was a dreamer and a prophet. But he was more. He was a tenacious advocate for what he believed was right, not unwilling to chide his administrative superiors when they appeared unresponsive or unsympathetic to his dreams. He was also an implementer. As a consequence, he left an extraordinary legacy to the University of Iowa. Each student who sits before a terminal today in conjunction with a course he is taking (there were over 5000 this past academic year) and each member of the faculty who turns to the computer for assistance (there were over 600 of them this academic year) is able to do so, in great measure, because of the vision and effectiveness of Gerry Weeg. We miss his dynamic presence but the impact of it will not cease to grow and must never be forgotten