Walt has been with the University of Miami for almost 25 years. He originally was hired as a programmer analyst but was reassigned to work on feasibility studies and long range information systems planning. One of the results of this planning led to the creation of an end user support team, which Walt was chosen to supervise. Through the years that team, originally two employees, has grown to more than 30 full time and more than 20 student and part time employees. The team is tasked with Wintel training, support and product acquisition for 10,000 employees and 15,000 students. Walt is known for his creative use of staffing and has a broad sampling of telecomputing, temporary and student employees. Every one of his managers and senior technicians were originally hired into junior level positions and then nurtured into management.
Walt manages the enterprise relationship with such vendors as Microsoft and Dell. His responsibilities include Wintel enterprise server support for such applications as the email (MS Exchange) and corporate web. His staff supports more than 150 production Wintel servers running at 3 locations. He implemented Microsoft Active Directory authentication in 2002. This implementation has since become a de facto single sign-on system with more than 15 applications/services (like desktop, wireless, procurement application, many web-based applications, computer labs, residential college computer access, library computer access) using this authentication. He evaluates information technology for university purchases and, under the guidance of the CIO, approves about 300 purchases annually costing over $30,000,000.
Walt was born in Philadelphia but has been a South Florida resident for over 30 years. He has a B.S. in Biblical Studies from Miami Christian College . He served in the military as an interrogator with the 82 nd Airborne Military Intelligence Company. He has been married for almost 30 years and has two children.