Small lady, big impact: remembering Barbara Horgan

In our lives and careers, no one makes it alone. Everyone has colleagues and mentors who generously give their time to help make us better people. This is why I seek to pay it forward with my teams and colleagues because I was given so much.

I recently remembered my late colleague, Barbara Horgan, who was both a gentle soul and a formidable leader in higher education during the 90s. Barbara served as the Director of Information Technology at the University of Washington Tacoma while I was new at the University of Washington Bothell. She also taught at the University of Phoenix in Seattle. Her career path included Seattle University and Butler University before she returned to the Pacific Northwest. Barbara was a member of the CAUSE (now EDUCAUSE) Board of Directors from 1994-95 and again from 1998-2000. Around the same time, she served on the EDUCOM Board of Trustees, moderated the CAUSE CIO listserv, and participated in the K-20 Educational Telecommunications Network for Washington State, where we were enhancing fiber infrastructure and upgrading Internet connectivity on college campuses.

Barbara exemplified the finest qualities of the emerging CIO profession, leveraging her extensive executive leadership experience from healthcare organizations and state government to benefit higher education. When I was naively aiming to expand IT departments, Barbara advised me on the growing importance of outsourcing and service level agreements (SLAs). She also presented on these topics at the EDUCAUSE Seattle conference in 1999, discussing outsourcing and the evolving landscape of IT management.

A tiny whisp of a thing who needed canes to get around, Barbara and I bonded over our shared belief in the importance of communication. Both of us had served as LISTSERV moderators for different educational groups in those early days, and we had come to appreciate the power of being publishers and editors to advance the professionalism of IT.

We met in Tacoma for the usual tour and staff introductions, followed by lunch at The Swiss (which, sadly, is no longer there). At the time, I was commuting 83 miles daily from Olympia to Bothell, so it was nice to end my day a bit closer to home. This led to coffee meetings with my Dean of Libraries, Cynthia Fugate, in Wallingford. During these meetings, we discovered we had many common issues, one of which was the need to win over the Seattle campus IT staff and prove our competence. Cynthia may have remarked, “The main Computing & Communications staff need to realize we at the branch campuses are not knuckle-draggers.”

This led to us wrangling lunch invitations to the UW Faculty Club with Provosts, Vice-Provosts, and Provosts-in-Waiting, where we gently reminded them of the importance of “home rule.” Bothell and Tacoma were distinct from Seattle. At Bothell, we were working with NBBJ to build our first campus, which would also be the first shared campus with Cascadia Community College, on the Truly Hereford Farm. We had numerous meetings about wiring the new campus: should we use the specifications of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges or those of the University of Washington? Ultimately, we reached a compromise (CAT5 for everything). The key takeaway was that moving forward, we would be consulted rather than lectured to.

Newly-minted IT leaders often overlook the importance of getting to know their fellow executives and understanding their perspectives. Thanks to Barb and many colleagues in Washington State, I’ve emerged as a better person and a more effective team leader.

Barb lost her battle with cancer in 2001, but whenever I face an issue that’s more about people and perceptions than technicalities, I try to channel her wisdom.

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