Don Lewicki’s former co-workers had a little surprise for him when he toured the new George B. Duke Engineering and Information Technologies Building, a building that he helped design before retiring from the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.
To understand the significance of the sign outside the university’s systems, networks and projects lab, “CIST SNAP LAB: Named in honor of Donald C. Lewicki,” it helps to go back a little.
Lewicki came to Pitt-Bradford in 2000 from IBM, where he worked in both technical and management positions. At Pitt-Bradford, he served both as a staff member overseeing computing, telecommunications and media services, taught management and enjoyed living in his hometown of nearby Olean, N.Y.
In 2007-08, he developed the university’s highly successful computer information systems and technology major, which is now one of the most popular on campus. He led that program as director until 2017, when he turned the program leadership over to Dr. Ken Wang, but he continued teaching in it for four more years.
Lewicki built the information technology program around projects, which students begin working on as soon as their second year. In 2015, Lewicki used a portion of gifts from Dr. Richard E. McDowell, president emeritus, and his wife, Ruth, and Zippo Manufacturing Co. to create a unique projects lab, the systems, networks and projects lab, known on campus as the SNAP Lab.
In the SNAP Lab students in networking classes create a server setup for a small business. Each student has their own “rack” to build their own small server. For the final examination, adjunct instructor and technical analyst Steve Ellison sabotages the servers with the kinds of problems information technology people deal with all the time – power outages, cyberattacks or a system overload. Students must then repair their creations.
It’s the kind of practical thinking that Lewicki liked to instill in students.
“Everything is hands-on collaboration,” he said. “If you have a good student, you need to give them a good project.”
So it was only appropriate that as Lewicki toured the new home of the computer information systems and technology program and came across the reimagined SNAP lab, he saw that it was named in his honor.
Lewicki was visibly moved.
“You left us quite a legacy here, Don,” Pitt-Bradford President Richard T. Esch told him.
Lewicki said, “We’ve had a lot of successful students, and I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
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