The Legacy of David Dodd

On Monday, November 4, Stevens students, faculty, and staff received a campus-wide email. David Dodd, the school’s Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer (CIO), will retire from Stevens at the end of 2019. President Nariman Farvardin touched upon several of Dodd’s contributions in the announcement.

During Dodd’s 7-year tenure at Stevens, the school modernized its technology infrastructure; adopted new programs such as the Virtual Learning Environment, Workday, and Office 365; and fought through a debilitating, advanced, campus-wide ransomware attack.

Not mentioned in the announcement, though, is what many consider to be Dodd’s greatest legacy: The trail of people who have departed from Stevens since he became CIO in 2012.

“He will often say that he was brought here to ‘clean house,'” said Suo. “So many people have left under him. So many more than under the last [CIO]s.”

Ahab verified these claims before adding, “If he did not like you, he would ice you out until it was just impossible for you to do your job. He would make it impossible for people to stay. So they would leave or be fired.”

A third source, Libra, worked with IT for almost a year, then “followed several colleagues out the door because it was simply not a healthy work environment.” Libra added that Dodd “fostered a community of constant stress which encouraged ‘narc-ing’ each other out. Solutions flowed up the chain of command … almost as fast as blame fell down it.”

Suo, Ahab, and Libra all asked that their names be changed for security reasons.

* The above list was generated, excerpted, and adapted by Suo, Ahab, and Libra. It is chronological, though incomplete. All information was redundantly verified by additional sources, including, but not limited to, Stevens.edu, TeamDynamix.com, and LinkedIn.com.