Her assistants swear she’s not a workaholic.

Yet, she wakes up at 5 or 6 a.m. to do work – before even going to work. And when she gets home from work, she works some more. Her secretary says her calendar is so full most people would pass out just from looking at it.

That’s probably true. Most people would probably pass out trying to sustain being the dean of a school, attending frequent meetings, leading research projects, traveling the world, teaching students, being a devoted mother and grandmother, lifting weights at the gym nearly every day, giving presentations, speaking at conferences and getting four to five hours of sleep per night.

But this is the life of Elizabeth D. Liddy. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

‘I’ve never worked when I didn’t like it,’ she said. ‘I like being busy. It’s just a natural for me.’

Liddy, the newly appointed dean of the School of Information Studies (iSchool), loves her life and her work, even if it means her days are hectic. In fact, she loves what she does because it keeps her busy.

‘My pet peeve is when people don’t really try and kind of float through life and don’t work at things,’ Liddy said.

As the saying goes, if there is something important that needs to be done, give it to the busiest person. The saying holds true in Liddy’s case. Juggling countless responsibilities and undertakings would probably turn the average person into a workaholic, but Liddy takes on her demanding schedule with fervor.

Jeff Stanton, associate dean for research and doctoral programs, said despite Liddy’s schedule, she manages to stay on top of everything without appearing at all overwhelmed.

‘Usually she’s very quick and very energetic. But at the same time, she’s not like a workaholic type of person,’ he said. ‘She loves life. She works really hard, and I know when she goes home at night she keeps working,’

Liddy served as interim dean since last summer after former dean, Raymond von Dran, stepped down. She was appointed as permanent dean Feb. 13 after a national search.

‘This is a really natural step for her,’ Stanton said. ‘She’s an extremely talented and creative person who has the capability to lead. It’s the perfect next step for her to be dean. It just fits.’

Even though Liddy’s full deanship is viewed as a natural next step, Liddy did not plan on becoming dean in the first place. She said she had never considered full deanship while she was interim dean, but then she found that she liked the position and applied as permanent dean.

She earned the position over the other national applicants. Robert Heckman, associate dean for academic affairs, said it’s a rarity for someone internally to be hired as dean in such a search.

‘It’s not often that a candidate has the support of everybody who’s had years to learn about all their strengths and weaknesses,’ Heckman said. ‘Sometimes that’s a disadvantage for the candidate, right? But for her, it was not.’

While serving as interim dean, Liddy was already beginning to take initiative and show her leadership abilities, which included starting a fundraiser to name the iSchool after the late Raymond von Dran.

‘She did that as an interim dean, and that says a lot about her,’ said Barbara Kwasnik, a professor in the iSchool and friend of Liddy for 20 years.

‘Many times an interim dean just kind of sits on the eggs. But she told us right from the start that she would be doing things, even though she was just interim,’ Kwasnik said.

Without hesitation, Liddy rattled off a lengthy list of goals she plans to accomplish during her time as dean of the iSchool. Some of them include increasing internalization of the program and increasing the broad diversity of international students by offering more leadership scholarships for top students.

Before Liddy was interim dean, she had a variety of jobs, mostly involved with language. Language and communication are long-standing passions.

‘It’s just my heart,’ Liddy said.

She was an English major at Daemen College and attended SU for her masters in information studies and Ph. D. in information transfer. In 1983, she joined the SU faculty as a visiting assistant professor and research associate, eventually working up the ranks to assistant professor in 1987 and then associate professor in 1993. In 1994, Liddy founded a company called TextWise and served as its president and CEO.

She pursued her passion for language in 1999 when she became the founding director of the iSchool’s Center for Natural Language Processing. The center aims to advance the development of human-like language understanding software capabilities for government, commercial and consumer applications, according to its Web site.

So far in her career, Liddy has led 65 research projects and written more than 110 research papers.

‘She’s a world-class researcher and a really successful entrepreneur,’ Kwasnik, a long-time friend of Liddy, said. ‘And all of that is self-taught. She didn’t have a degree in linguistics or computational linguistics. She basically figured it out. She took classes at Cornell, she read a lot. And most of all, she just pursued it with doggedness.’

Kwasnik, while looking inside the center where Liddy had worked, paused at the doorway and pointed toward the center of the room.

‘Can you guess which desk was hers?’ Kwasnik said.

Sure enough, Liddy’s desk was smack-dab in the middle of the room, right along with everyone else’s workspaces.

‘That’s her management style,’ Stanton said. ‘She wants to be down in among everybody and see what’s going on – not off in a tower somewhere.’

Liddy doesn’t even consider it an option to treat people with anything but respect, especially, she said, because the faculty and staff are the ones who keep the school going.

‘I don’t like people who treat people based on their status,’ Liddy said. ‘People are people.’

Iris Stewart, Liddy’s executive assistant, said she loves working for someone so down-to-earth and vibrant. Stewart said that Liddy’s care for her colleagues is no secret.

‘She shares her ideas, she makes you feel like you’re part of the team,’ Stewart said.

Liddy was one of the best in the school when she was a faculty member in terms of service to the school, Heckman said. And as a teacher, she also was at the top.

‘She has an eye on quality and doesn’t just knock things out,’ Kwasnik said. ‘And it’s really unusual for a person of this caliber in grant and research to also be an outstanding teacher.’

Liddy said among all the projects her students would do and all the improving technology and new software and developments, she loved teaching and the research involved.

‘I can’t imagine teaching something that’s a dead subject where there’s nothing new happening,’ Liddy said.

Although it seems Liddy works nonstop, she also makes time for another passion – her family.

Though she lives alone, Liddy spends a remarkable amount of time with her family. And with an immediate family of 56 people, it’s not surprising. She has three brothers, one sister and is the second oldest out of five.

But her true delight is clear to see just by looking around her office. Pictures of her three children and four grandchildren are on display throughout her workspace. Liddy is never hesitant to show them off.

‘I’m absolutely wild about them,’ she said. ‘They’re very straightforward and very honest. It’s very refreshing.’

Her love for her family is evident to her colleagues.

‘She makes a point of going to see them once a month … no matter what,’ Kwasnik said. ‘And she just decided she was going to do that. And that’s her. She decides she’s going to do it, and then she makes it happen.’

A day off is hard to imagine for Liddy. But she manages to fit in a little time for herself.

‘It would be nice to sit and read something that I wanted to, not that I had to,’ she reflected.

But she’s not interested in sitting in one spot for very long.

She loves outdoor fast-paced activities, like kayaking and biking. She doesn’t like yoga because it’s too slow for her. She would much rather be strength training in a class setting at the gym.

‘It’s very typical of her,’ Kwasnik said. ‘She likes to go fast.’

Kwasnik learned this firsthand. While at a conference in Hawaii with Liddy, each of the two took a helicopter ride over a volcano. Kwasnik said she was nothing less than terrified, but Liddy, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to go.

‘I love heights,’ Liddy said. ‘I love roller coasters, I love parasailing, I love waterskiing.’

Liddy loves to travel. She says when you’re confined to living in one place, you have to travel to other places and learn about them. One of her favorite places to live would be Croatia.

‘I love Croatia,’ she said. ‘It’s a beautiful country, and they’re a very open people.’

Although she can’t live by the water in Croatia, Liddy still fulfills her love for the water by having a cottage on a lake.

‘Summer is my favorite season,’ she said. ‘Every day it seems like the water and sky look different. Even the wind is different.’

Even on vacation at Disney World – where she’s been six times – she finds a way to stay busy. She’d wake up early to go on Space Mountain, her favorite ride, and ride it again and again with her family before the park officially opened.

Liddy says people try to tell her to slow down, but she doesn’t want to.

‘I don’t even like to go to sleep,’ she said.

kapapo@syr.edu

Published on March 18, 2008 at 12:00 pm