Professor leverages corporate experience to help students

Meet Jeff Gilles, a professor and so much more. He is a professor at Seattle University’s Computer Science department.

Jeff is a part of the wonderful higher education system in the Seattle area that is producing talented, capable young people for the vibrant local tech sector. There is a reason why so many Silicon Valley powerhouse companies recently have been opening offices around here – access to an educated, tech-savvy workforce.

For his students, Jeff brings more than just his academic experience and background. He had a long and prosperous career in the corporate world prior to landing on Seattle University’s campus. In fact, it was his job at Oracle that moved him and his family to Seattle from Iowa 22 years ago.

Later, Jeff turned into an entrepreneur by starting his own technology-based training company, Clarity, in 1992. Three years later, Clarity was acquired by ARIS and Jeff and I ended up working together.

Jeff joined ARIS as Vice President of Education and played various strategic executive roles leading up to the company’s IPO in 1997. “The whole growth thing was fun,” he said. “Having a part in helping new offices grow in New York, Washington DC, Denver, Dallas and others was very satisfying.”

Jeff had a vision for online training back in the late 1990’s. He knew that the internet would eventually be a popular platform for training. He spearheaded ARIS’ efforts in this field before the company was eventually bought by Ciber.

Jeff left ARIS in 2000 and enjoyed retirement for a little less than year. Apparently, his wife, Glenda, didn’t enjoy his retirement quite as much and asked him to get a job. Having solidified his golf swing during his mini-retirement, he looked for a job that would keep him in the tech field but would not be a huge time commitment — like ARIS had been. The opportunity from Seattle University in 2001 seemed perfect.

“The students today are much more web and technology-savvy than even a decade ago when we were at ARIS,” he said, explaining that this allows him and his students to focus more on interesting applications of computer science rather than just the rudimentary elements.

Jeff has especially worked hard with the senior projects, which involve a group of students working with a local sponsoring company on a defined project. At first, the students are really confident that they can do what the projects require, he said. Then, as the project moves on, the complexity of working together and solving business requirements become somewhat overwhelming for them. Inevitably, the students pull it together and come up with interesting and effective solutions. “That’s been the most gratifying part for me,” Jeff said of working at Seattle University.

Local companies, such as Boeing, Areva, Mckinistry, among many others, participate in this program to help young students gain useful experience, as well as a way of recruiting new graduates.

Recently, my company, ZeroDash1, hired two of the recent graduates from his program. So far, we’ve been impressed with their knowledge as well as work ethics. I can see why nurturing such blossoming young minds could be so rewarding to this former corporate executive.

Looking forward, however, Jeff is pondering retirement again. But Glenda needn’t worry, he plans to stay out of the house playing music and golf. Jeff currently plays guitar in a 9-piece Swing Jazz band, Easy Street. The band will be playing at Tulas on August 31st from 3:00 TO 7:00PM. He promises fun times for all those who attend.

Jeff has always had a passion for music since his glory days in a high school rock band. He plans to get involved in a couple of other “duet projects” later this year.

As for golf, well, he has been my golf buddy for some time now (I mentioned our golf outings in a prior blog). Jeff’s quick wit and dry sense of humor makes a round of golf fly by. Nonetheless, we remain highly competitive when it comes to winning skins from each other. That is why, it is not so much Glenda who is worried about whether Jeff may retire any time soon… rather it’s me, his golf partner who can’t afford for Jeff’s game to get too much better.

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1

Kendall on July 21, 2008 at 2:54 pm

Very fun post, John.
2

Jennifer on January 2, 2009 at 12:43 pm

It was interesting to read your post on Jeff Gilles and to hear of the good work he’s doing at Seattle U. My own history with Jeff goes way way back, long before his corporate and golf days, to a time when computers were more a part of science fiction than of everyday life.

I met Jeff in 1974, in Iowa City, through some mutual friends. The first meeting was brief and it wasn’t until a year later that I saw him again, in the spring of ’75. He was working at an art supply store in IC and I was a disguntled graduate student in the Fine Arts department at U Iowa. During that chance meeting Jeff asked me out on a date.

Jeff and I fell in love and it wasn’t long before we were living together. He got a job doing carpentry work and I ended up doing the same. We were poor as church mice but we were so in love that money hardly mattered. Many people thought of us as the “perfect couple”, even to the point of looking alike. In fact, a photographer friend of ours photographed us for her “Look Alike Couple Series.”

In 1977, with a loan from my father, we were able to put money down on 10 acres of land in rural Iowa, near West Branch. This fulfilled some big dream we both had and in the spring we started building a house.

Jeff designed the house and, although he’d probably now think it was a piece junk, at the time it seemed like a palace. Much of it was built from recycled materials — we had torn down a barn and an oak-framed house. Plus, we bought styrofoam window cut-outs from the Winnebago Company in northern Iowa to use for insulating the floor, and hauled them home in an old, rattley pickup. By late summer we were ready to move in. It would have been a cold winter had Jeff’s parents not sprung for fiberglass insulation to fill the walls and ceiling.

We lived there for a year without running water and then my mother offered to pay to have a well drilled. That was momentous, to say the least, and once we had running water, the next obvious thing was to get married.

By 1980 our carpentry days were dwindling and Jeff was ready to move on to something more promising and less physically strenuous in the way of a career. So, I got a desk job in Iowa City and he went back to school. Thus began his life with computers.

I hope you don’t mind reading this little bit of ancient history. It’s not surprising, knowing Jeff for as long as I did, that he would make such a success of his life, and also that he is helping others along the way. Jeff always had big visions and his mind worked overtime on how to make those visions a reality.

If you decide not to post this comments I will, of course, understand. But I thought it might be interesting for some to read of Jeff’s earlier life, before Glenda and the kids and before he made it “big” in computers.

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