Farewell After 40 Years

Purchase College bids farewell to a stalwart among staff for decades. Bill Junor, Chief Information Officer and Director of Campus Technology Services is retiring after 40 years.

Bill joined CTS full-time in 1986 as a programmer analyst after working part-time as a student assistant.

He first came to Purchase in 1983 to take a painting class with Roger Hendrix. He took the same class over again for three years—for the experience, not the credit. This pursuit of learning for learning’s sake became the norm as he amassed a collection of college credits, “a whole haphazard set of things that were interesting,” but never earned a degree. Taking classes ended when he “ascended to the top of the greasy pole,” as he describes his 1996 promotion to director.

At the time, the Internet as we now know it barely existed, only a few people SUNY-wide had email through something called BitNet.

Bill remembers another artifact commonly used in computing back then. “When I first started, we were doing COBOL programming with Job Control Language—and they actually still had the punch cards and the punch card machines.”

The first graphical web browser, Mosaic, landed in the mid-90s, which inspired Bill to write a book, Internet: The User’s Guide for Everyone, first published in 1995.

When asked what kept him at Purchase all these years, he replies with what he called his elevator pitch. “What I’ve always liked about Purchase is it’s a big enough place that has everything a small town would have - and yet it’s small enough that you as an individual can actually move the needle on something at times.”

He cites the creation of the Passage Gallery as an example. “I had an interest in the arts and interest in students and the ability to make the right pitch to the right person at the right time to make that happen. The Passage Gallery worked really well for a really long time.”

As secretary for the Strategic Planning Committee, he led the committee in authoring the 2004–2009 Strategic Plan, complete with “150 specific actions with metrics and accountable parties that directors and VPs were asked to report progress on annually—all built on top of a thorough SWOT analysis.” He presented to the annual conference of SUNY CIOs on the need to get involved in strategic planning. But in typical self-effacing fashion, he also downplays his role. “Maybe it was a fool’s errand. Always hard to tell which way is up on Planet Purchase.”

Looking back, he’s also proud of what didn’t happen. “Not having anything bad happen for 30 years,” he says. “Ever since early 2000, it’s been incredibly dangerous on the Internet, and somehow we seem to have kept it all at bay.” With ransomware attacks and major data breaches on the rise, “I was sure that any given day, I would get that phone call, and my head’s going to be on the platter,” he says. “You have to hold somebody accountable. You need somebody’s head on the platter. And of course, it would be mine.”

What he’ll miss the most is his staff, some of whom have been working in CTS for 20 years. He suspects his non-dictatorial management style has contributed to their longevity and success. “I try to get everybody to come to things on their own, and that has worked.” The proof? He received a call recently from a long-ago former employee who said that he made a big difference in their life. “That’s a little weird. I wasn’t expecting that. But it’s cool,” he says. “When they are self-directed they tend to stay and work harder and produce amazing results that made me look good.”

The irony of working in higher education without holding a college degree is not lost on Bill. “In my twisted estimation, not having the credentials made me work twice as hard to feel like I belonged and to get away with it for as long as I did.” In turn, he sought to provide the same opportunity to others.

With the daily grind in the rear view, he plans to devote more time to painting. Bill has a painting included in The New Britain Museum of American Art: Nor’Easter, a showcase of contemporary visual arts on view September 21—October 8.